BENTONVILLE : Crystal Bridges museum obtains Rosie the Riveter

BY TRACIE DUNGAN
Posted on Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Courtesy of The Saturday Evening Post / Photography by Dwight Primiano. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art announced Monday it had acquired Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter, a 52-by-40-inch oil on canvas painting created in 1943.

The planned Crystal Bridges museum in Bentonville has acquired Norman Rockwell's iconic Rosie the Riveter painting for its permanent collection at an undisclosed price.

Officials with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art made the announcement Monday, offering few details other than the fact the museum bought the painting from a private collector.

Rockwell painted the image of feminine brawn that symbolizes women's place in the World War II-era workforce for the May 29, 1943, cover of The Saturday Evening Post.

Sotheby's auctioned the painting to an unnamed buyer on May 22, 2002, for $4.96 million, according to its Web site, www.sothebys.com.

At the time, The Associated Press reported that the anonymous buyer had anted up the highest price ever paid at public auction for a Rockwell painting.

The 52-by-40-inch oil on canvas depicts "Rosie" on lunch break, her riveting gun on her lap as she uses a dog-eared copy of Mein Kampf as a foot stool.

Rockwell's Rosie is posed as an homage to Michelangelo's frescoed depiction of the prophet Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

"It speaks to people interested in art and history and popular culture," said Chris Crosman, Crystal Bridges' chief curator.

Crosman wouldn't name the seller. He also wouldn't reveal when the museum bought the painting or how much it paid.

Museum officials have long been secretive about how much it is costing to construct and stock the museum, saying it is a gift to the community.

Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton and the Walton Family Foundation announced plans for the museum in 2005. Original plans called for it to open in May 2009, but the opening later was reset to sometime in 2010.

In March, museum officials removed the 2010 opening date from its Web site, but haven't announced a new opening time.

The chief curator of Norman Rockwell Museum, Stephanie Plunkett, said Monday that her museum didn't have the resources to buy the painting.

"We would have loved to own Rosie, but unfortunately, the sale prices for Rockwell at the time it initially sold at auction were increasing dramatically," Plunkett said, referring to the 2002 auction. "So that made it impossible for us to purchase it.

"But it's exciting to know that another museum has purchased it - because that makes it possible for the public to [permanently] enjoy it."

Plunkett and other Norman Rockwell Museum officials called the Stockbridge, Mass., museum, celebrating its 40th anniversary, the home of the "largest and most significant" collection of Rockwell works.

The Rosie painting has been on loan to the Rockwell museum in the past.

In the early 1990s, the museum exhibited Rosie in its gallery. Then, between 1999 and 2002, Rosie was part of the Rockwell museum's traveling "Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People" tour that included an October 2001 stop at the Guggenheim in New York.

The Rockwell museum officials also noted that Crystal Bridges is a planned, future stop on a touring exhibition that is about to get under way.

"American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell" will arrive in Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art on Nov. 14, 2009. The tour is scheduled to stop at Crystal Bridges in March 2013, running through May of that year.

"I'm sure that will be a perfect marriage," Jeremy Clowe, the Rockwell museum's communications assistant, said of Crystal Bridges' Rosie and his museum's traveling Rockwell show.

The 2002 Sotheby's auction, where Rosie went for $4,959,500, "was the last time it was sold publicly at auction," Plunkett said.

Museums have official ways of finding out who a buyer is, so that they can make arrangements to get artworks on loan for special exhibits, Plunkett said.

She added that she did learn who the 2002 buyer was, but would respect the buyer's privacy. However, she did confirm that the 2002 buyer was neither Crystal Bridges museum nor Alice Walton.

"It was definitely a different buyer," Plunkett said.

There's no way to truly know the current value of a painting, she said, since it's all based on what the market will bring. The economic downturn often has its effects, she said, and though a past history of purchases can help one estimate a value, all it takes is one very eager buyer to prove such an estimate wrong.

Rockwell's Rosie was not part of a series of oil paintings, Plunkett and her colleagues said, but generally his works include a number of preparatory mockups.

"He had about a 15-step process," she said. "He would start with a small thumbnail sketch of his idea."

Rockwell would assemble props for the artwork, take reference photos, then pose his subjects and objects. He would then go through an extensive set of sketches.

Audrey Manring, a Rockwell spokesman, described them as pencil sketches, then larger "charcoal studies," then color studies before creating the actual painting.

"Eventually, he would transfer his drawing onto canvas," Plunkett said.

He juggled many assignments at once, "and deadlines were always looming" for the magazine.

Rosie was among the works that Americans particularly identified with.

"One thing that is unique about Rosie the Riveter, is it is truly an American icon: the image of an American woman working during World War II," Plunkett said.

"Rockwell was quite an American master, really, during World War II," she said. "He was painting images that really gave us a sense of who we were."

Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter Painting Auctioned

Norman Rockwell's painting of Rosie the Riveter was auctioned by Sotheby's on May 22, 2002 for $4,959,500. The painting is 52 by 40in. (132.1 by 101.6cm.) and signed Norman/Rockwell, l.r. oil on canvas. Painted in 1943.

Following the United States' entry into World War II in 1941, millions of American women answered the government's call to enter the work force and fill traditionally male jobs left vacant by those who had gone off to fight. Above all, women's labor was urgently needed to help fill shortages created by the expanded wartime economy, especially in the production of military hardware. These women who wore hard-hats and overalls and operated heavy machinery represented a radical departure from the traditional American feminine ideal of housewife and mother.

In 1942, a popular song about a patriotic female defense worker called Rosie the Riveter provided the name that became synonymous with this new kind of American woman.

Painted for the cover of the May 29, 1943 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter gave visual form to this phenomenon and became an iconic image of American popular culture. Rockwell portrayed Rosie as a monumental figure clad in overalls and a work-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal her powerful, muscular arms. Seated against the backdrop of a rippling American flag, she is shown pausing for lunch, with a riveting machine and a tin lunch box balanced on her substantial lap, her visor and goggles pushed back on her head and a ham sandwich clasped in her hand. Despite her massive bulk, sturdy work clothes and the smudges on her arms and cheeks, Rosie's painted fingernails, lipstick and the tidy arrangement of her bright red curls wittily convey her underlying femininity. Pausing between bites, she gazes into the distance with a detached air of supreme self-assurance, while casually crushing a tattered copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf under her feet.

Rockwell found the model for Rosie in Mary Doyle (now Mary Keefe), a nineteen year old telephone operator in Arlington, Vermont. Mrs. Keefe recalls meeting Mary Rockwell, the artist's wife, when she came in to pay her telephone bill. Like many other residents of the small town, Mary eventually became acquainted with the artist and readily accepted when Rockwell called and asked her to pose. Mrs. Keefe remembers arriving at the studio, where Rockwell had assembled her costume, which originally included a white shirt and saddle shoes. She sat for several photographs (all of which were destroyed when Rockwell's studio burned to the ground during the summer of 1943), but had to return for a second session with the artist when he decided he wanted Rosie to be wearing a blue shirt and penny loafers. Mrs. Keefe saw the final composition for the first time during a trip to a newsstand in Bennington, Vermont, where she happened to see a poster advertising the May 29, 1943 edition of The Saturday Evening Post. She remembers being rather shocked by Rockwell's transformation of her slim figure into Rosie's overly muscular physique, but adds that the artist later called her to apologize for his exaggerated enlargement of her size.

Many Post readers quickly observed that Rockwell found the source for Rosie's monumental dignity and classical enthronement in Michelangelo's depiction of the prophet Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel ceiling (figure 4, Michelangelo Buonarroti, fresco, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City, Italy). American audiences were generally amused and delighted by the connection, which was first revealed to the public when the Kansas City Star ran images of Rockwell's Rosie and Michelangelo's Isaiah side by side. Just as Isaiah was called by God to convert the wicked from their sinful ways and trample evildoers under foot, so Rockwell's Rosie tramples Hitler under her all-American penny loafer. Righteousness is described throughout Isaiah's prophecy as God's "strong right arm," a characterization that must surely have occurred to the artist as he portrayed Rosie's muscular forearms.

As a final touch, Rockwell has painted a halo floating just above the visor pushed back on Rosie's head. The artist's tongue-in-cheek canonization of Rosie clearly intended to signify the rightness of her cause, although as a New Testament phenomenon, sainthood would not have been available to the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah. As in many of Rockwell's most memorable World War II paintings, the playful, slightly irreverent humor expressed in Rosie the Riveter is combined with a more serious, patriotic message.

During a critical period of the war, Rosie reminded Americans, in a message that still resonates today, of the need for all to do their part in the war effort and to take pride in the work involved. Rockwell's unique ability in the context of 20th century American art was his talent as a communicator and by the end of the Great Depression, the artist had dispensed with some of the occasionally cloying sweetness of his earlier work, allowing the force of his images to come across with a new potency. Judy Larson and Maureen Hart Hennessey have pointed out that, "Rockwell's pictures often honored the American spirit. Particularly during times of crisis, Rockwell created images that communicated patriotism and unquestioned allegiance to the United States" (Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People, New York, 1999, p. 53).

Despite the humor apparent in the painting, Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter is also a testament to the indomitable strength of the American spirit during one of the most challenging times in the nation's history. Rosie's cool self confidence, sheer physical might and unwavering support of her country parallel the strength, determination and patriotism of the American people. In the years since it was painted, Rosie the Riveter has become an iconic image of American culture and a part of Rockwell's enduring legacy: Robert Hughes writes, "...on the history of mass communication--and on the popular self-image of America--his mark was deep, and will remain indelible" (Nothing if Not Critical, New York, 1990, p. 233). Rockwell's Rosie--as in the case of his famous Four Freedoms paintings--also played a role in the government's efforts to raise money for the war.

In 1943, the Saturday Evening Post donated the painting to the United States Treasury Department's Second War Loan Drive. Between 1941 and 1946, the United States Treasury Department conducted eight War Loan Drives, which promoted the sale of war or "victory" Bonds to finance America's contribution to World War II. The incredibly successful drives were overseen by the War Finance Committee and were publicized by advertisements and promotional materials created by government agencies--such as the posters featuring the Four Freedoms, which promoted the Second War Loan Drive--as well as private companies. "Seeking to stir the conscience of Americans, [the government advertising campaigns] invoked both their financial and moral stake in the war. The sale of war bonds provided a way in which patriotic attitudes and the spirit of sacrifice could be expressed, and became the primary way those on the home-front contributed to the national defense and war effort" (Brief History of World War II Advertising Campaigns: War Loans and Bonds, Duke University, Digital Scriptorium).

Like the Four Freedoms, Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter was taken on a nationwide tour to promote the sale of war bonds during the Second War Loan Drive. Mrs. Keefe remembers her cousin James Martin, Jr. coming home to Arlington while on leave from the United States Navy in 1943 and describing his visit to the Fifth Avenue Merchant's Association, where the traveling exhibition accompanying the Second War Loan Drive was on view. The exhibition included several familiar faces for Mr. Martin; upon entering, he recognized his father, James [Jim] Martin, Sr., as one of the models for all four of the Four Freedoms and was amused to see a monumental version of his cousin Mary being exhibited as Rosie the Riveter. The tours included paintings by several artists, including Rockwell's close friend the illustrator Mead Schaeffer. They stopped at popular destinations in cities around the nation, where paintings were sometimes raffled off as a way of generating excitement and attracting additional publicity for the War Loan Drives.

According to Maureen Hart Hennessey, on the tour for the Second War Loan Drive, some of Mead Schaeffer's pictures were raffled off as well as a few of Rockwell's paintings of Willie Gillis. An article published in the April 15, 1945 edition of The Art Digest reports that after being donated to the War Loan Drive, Rosie the Riveter was "won in [a] contest by Mrs. P.R. Eichenberg of Mt. Lebanon, Pa." (p. 18), which was presumably a raffle along the same lines. The raffle may have taken place while the painting was on view at Strawbridge & Clothier's department store in Philadelphia, which was the second stop on the tour. The painting was then acquired by the Chicago Pneumatic Tool Co. on East 44th Street in New York, where it hung in the window next to a placard explaining it history. The article concluded "Further decorating the window are riveting hammers, identical with the one on Rosie's knee" (p. 18). Provenance: The Saturday Evening Post Donated to the United States Treasury Department's Second War Loan Drive, 1943 Mrs. P.R. Eichenberg, Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania (won in a raffle held by the above) Chicago Pneumatic Tool Company, New York Martha Parrish and James Reinish, New York Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Exhibited: Stockbridge, Massachusetts, The Norman Rockwell Museum, Looking Back: Norman Rockwell Paints the 20th Century, February-June 1990 Atlanta, Georgia, High Museum of Art; Chicago, Illinois, Chicago Historical Society; Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery of Art; San Diego, California, San Diego Museum of Art; Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix Art Museum; Stockbridge, Massachusetts, The Norman Rockwell Museum; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People, November 1999-February 2002, illustrated in color pp. 28, 30 and on the back cover Literature: The Saturday Evening Post, May 29, 1943, illustrated on the cover Kansas City Star, June 6, 1943, illustrated The Art Digest, July 1, 1943, p. 14, illustrated Norman Rockwell, The Norman Rockwell Album, New York, 1961, p. 46, illustrated in color Thomas Buechner, Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Retrospective, New York, 1972, p. 54 Christopher Finch, Norman Rockwell's America, New York, 1975, illustrated in color p. 206, pl. 262, p. 293, illustrated in black and white Laurie Norton Moffatt, Norman Rockwell: A Definitive Catalogue, vol. I, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1986, no. C403, p. 153, illustrated Robin Langley Sommer, Norman Rockwell: A Classic Treasury, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1993, illustrated in color p. 23 Penny Colman, Rosie the Riveter: Women Working on the Home Front in World War II, New York, 1995, illustrated in color on the cover Stephen Goode, "Discovering Rockwell," Insight, February 7, 2000, p. 13, illustrated in color on the cover "A Norman Rockwell Moment," The Washington Post, Saturday, July 8, 2000, p. C3 Michael Kimmelman, "Flags, Mom and Apple Pie Through Altered Eyes," The New York Times, November 2, 2001, p. E35, illustrated in color Lara Claridge, Norman Rockwell, A Life, New York, 2001, pp. 133, 321-22 "Art Guide," The New York Times, January 25, 2002, p. E41, illustrated

From the San Francisco Chronicle, May 21, 2002:
On Wednesday, not quite 59 years after landing on newsstands on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, "Rosie the Riveter" will be the star of Sotheby's American paintings sale.
Sotheby's estimates that "Rosie," which became a symbol of women's contributions to the war effort, will go for $3 million to $5 million.
The Rockwell biographer Karal Ann Marling once described Rockwell's figure in overalls and a work shirt as everybody's saucy sister, with a lace hankie tucked into a pocket of her dungarees.
The painting made the model for Rosie, Mary Keefe, something of a footnote in history at the age of 20, but she considered it just one of those things. "I never think too much about it, but my children do," she said, describing show-and-tell talks by her children and, more recently, her grandchildren.
She was not the only person in her family who was in a Rockwell: A cousin of Keefe's appeared in Rockwell's "Four Freedoms."
From the New Hampshire Union Leader, may 22, 2002:
Nashua woman was model for Rockwell classic
By GARY DENNIS

SHE SAT FOR Norman Rockwell - how many people can say they did that?
For two mornings in 1943, Nashua's Mary Doyle Keefe sat in the artist's Arlington, Vt., studio and posed for what would eventually become Rockwell's "Rosie the Riveter" painting, a classic in pro-American World War II art. The original will be auctioned at Sotheby's auction house in Manhattan today.
It's expected to fetch between $3 million and $5 million.
Keefe sighs when she hears it. Rockwell, whose works graced the covers of the wildly popular Saturday Evening Post in World War II times, paid her $5 a day for the two sittings - she'll see no more profit of it.
"But I can say I sat for him," she said.
Keefe, 78, is now a grandmother of 11 and a bit more timid than the burly, beefy-armed steel worker shown in the familiar piece. At 19, when Rockwell used her as a model, she was slight, trim and curvy - not much like the painting representing women filling construction jobs left vacant by male soldiers gone off to fight.
Rockwell's work was a shot in the arm for patriotic American sentiment, yet he worried the work might be more of a slap in the face for the young, pretty and slender woman he paid $5 twice to paint.
"He called several weeks before it came out and said 'I'm sorry, I made you a big woman,' " Keefe said.
And how. Rosie wears what appears to be a baggy blue coverall outfit. A tin lunch box sits in her ample lap as she hoists a sandwich to her already-filled mouth. The only thing thicker than the baseball bat-wide riveter leaning on her legs are the sizable biceps shown beneath her rolled sleeves.
Her loafers crush a copy of Adolf Hitler's work, "Mein Kampf." You wouldn't want to mess with Rosie.
It's obvious the public enlargement bothered Keefe at least a little bit.
"Oh, there was lots of kidding and teasing," she said, but it was essentially harmless.
Of Rockwell, Keefe said he was a personable and friendly man.
"Very talkative," she said.
Arlington was the type of community Rockwell often painted in his scenes. It was small; everyone knew everyone else. Keefe and her mother worked in the town's telephone company office and knew of the Rockwell family - Norman, Mary and their three boys - once they moved to town from neighboring New York.
"They were part of the community like every other couple," Keefe said.
Several residents of Arlington were asked by Rockwell to pose in his studio. He used Green Mountain State residents for several of his paintings, including the "Four Freedoms" series and "Rosie the Riveter," all sanctioned by the U.S. government at the time to promote war bonds.
Rosie was initially donated to the U.S. Treasury and then bought by a woman in Pennsylvania. An anonymous collector paid $2 million for it two years ago.
Arlington's magazine and newspaper shop would put out advances on the Saturday Evening Post cover art before it hit the stands. Keefe took a gander at the advance and admits she was a little surprised at what she saw.
She still keeps a letter Rockwell typed to her after the picture came out. In it, he apologizes again and again for the "kidding" she must have endured for the picture. He seems sincerely concerned about it in the note.
"I know you took a lot of ribbing when I painted the picture," he wrote in the letter. ". . . The kidding you took about the picture was all my fault because I really thought you were the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, but then I did have to make you into a sort of a giant."
Her life didn't change much with the immense popularity of the work. Sure, it encouraged neat conversations with friends and family. Her own four children - two boys and two girls - always had a standby show and tell school project by just bringing in a picture book of Norman Rockwell's work.
But her life didn't depart much from what it would likely have been with no Rosie. She married Robert Keefe, a shoe company worker, after the war, became a dental hygienist, raised her four children and made several homes around Massachusetts and New Hampshire as the shoe industry saw fit.
Of the titanic price the painting could fetch today, she doesn't seem to mind her zero percent take. Sotheby's already flew her and Robert to New York City last week to promote the auction. That, the memories and framed pictures of Rosie are enough, she said.
"And hey, I sat for Rockwell," she says again.