Norman Rockwell and Illustration
Mobilizing America in WWII
Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944)
Government’s Food Saving Campaign
Seen in The New York Times (January 20, 1918) article on the committee
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Liberty Girl
Cover illus for The SEP (September 4, 1943)
After having promoted American neutrality from the beginning of the war, in 1917, within days of America entering World War I, the government needed as way to convince the public that American participation in the European war was now not merely necessary, but imperative. Less than a week later, Pres. Wilson issued an executive order creating a Committee on Public Information (CPI) which was to act as an agency for releasing news of the government; issuing information to sustain morale in the US, administering voluntary press censorship, and later, developing propaganda abroad.
On April 22, 1917, Gibson met with Creel in New York City and the Division of Pictorial Publicity of the Committee on Public Information was formally launched, just nine days after Creel himself had received his mandate from President Wilson. Creel later described his feelings: “Even in the rush of the first days…I had the conviction that the poster must play a great part in the fight for public opinion”. The printed word might not be read; people might not chose to attend meetings or to watch motion pictures, but the poster billboard was something that caught even the most indifferent eye. What was needed, what we absolutely had to have, were posters that represented the best work of the best creative artists of our time. Looking the field over, it was decided that Charles Dana Gibson was the best man to lead the army of artists.
The CPI was on target to reach the American reading public with its message, but George Creel who headed the CPI realized that the word also had to read those Americans less inclined to read newspapers and attend meetings. To reach this other portion of the American public, Creel created the Division of Pictorial Publicity and appointed Charles Dana Gibson, who was an ardent supporter of the war, to assemble a group of artists to design posters for the government.
Gibson and a group of volunteer artists formed the Division of Pictorial Publicity under the chairmanship of Charles Dana Gibson. The Division’s mission was to produce on request all manner of pictorial material in support of the war effort for governmental departments and civilian organizations. Associate Chairmen of the DPP were Herbert Adams, E. H. Blashfield, Ralph Clarkson, Cass Gilbert, Oliver D. Grover, Francis C. Jones, Arthur F. Mathews, Joseph Pennell, Edmund C. Tarbell, and Douglas Volk.
The Division had an executive committee that received all requests for artwork and passed on all the designs. Illustrator Charles B. Falls was one of the members of the executive committee as were F. D. Casey, F. G. Cooper, Henry Reuterdahl, N. Pousette-Dart, I. Doskow, F. E. Dayton, A. E. Gallatin, Ray, Greenleaf, Malvina Hoffman, W. A. Rogers, Jack Sheridan, H. Scott Train, H. D. Welsh, J. Thomson Willing, H. T. Webster, Walter Whitehead, and Robert J. WIldhack.
There were also Departmental Captains who followed through on requests received by the Executive Committee. These captains (again such as C. B. Falls) either produced the designs themselves or passed along an assignment to a suitable artist.
The headquarters of the Division were at 200 Fifth Ave., NY, with sectional branches in Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco.
Over the next 18 months the CPI’s Division of Pictorial Publicity turned out 1,438 different designs for posters, window cards, newspaper advertisements, cartoons, seals and buttons. Its most famous poster, featuring a stern, finger-pointing Uncle Sam saying "I Want You," was drawn by illustrator James Montgomery Flagg. The muster roll of the Division of Pictorial Publicity contained the names of 279 artists and 33 cartoonists. Among them were such well known painters as George Bellows, Kenyon Cox, Arthur G. Dove, William Glackens, F. Luis Mora, Joseph Pennell, Frank E. Schhoonover, Albert Sterner, H. Giles, and N.C. Wyeth. The roster also included very famous illustrators such as Howard Chandler Christy, Harrison Fisher, Joseph Leyendecker, Edward Penfield, Jessie Wilcox Smith and James Montgomery Flagg to name but a few. In addition there were those whose work for the Division made them famous: Charles Livingston Bull, Dean Cornwell, Harvey Dunn, Gordon Grant, Herbert Paus, and Ellsworth Young.
Wladyslaw Theodor Benda (1873-1948)
More Socks and Sweaters
20" x 29.5"
This is an extremely rare and unusual WWI poster. The central image of the woman knitting appeard first on a Red Cross poster with the title "You can help". But this version is meant recruit experienced knitters to make socks and sweaters for the boys "over there". Specifically, they want 30,000 socks and 12,500 sweaters, and the wool is provided free!
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
“Sure, Boys, All for You.”, 1918
Poster and Ad for U. S. Naval Camp, Charleston, SC
Published in Afloat and Ashore (November 6, 1918): 1.
During WWI Rockwell served in the U. S. Navy. Stationed at the Naval Camp in Charleston, SC he worked for the camp newspaper creating pictures.
Man in Fedora / Woman in military based hat / Like a Caubeen, Irish military hat, traditionally green with insignia / The Stetson Cavalry Hat / Boy scout hat, also made by Stetson. / Sailor cap—all cotton, like a bucket cap but the rim flips up away from the head. / Army helmet
Norman Rockwell (1894–1978)
U.S. Army Teaches a Trade, 1919
Oil on canvas
Painting for United States Army recruiting poster, 1919
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, NRM.1977.03
Norman Rockwell's image of a G.I. telegrapher was meant to promote one of the benefits of military service: Army training would prepare a soldier with skills needed to get a job upon return to civilian life.
This painting was one of several which Rockwell completed in the style of his friend and fellow Saturday Evening Post illustrator J.C. Leyendecker. Well-known for advertising images commissioned by Arrow Shirt Collars, and the House of Kuppenheimer, Leyendecker's deliberately thick, visible brushstrokes were emulated by Rockwell in this work. The inclusion of a border with related thematic insignias was also a motif which both Leyendecker and Coles Philips regularly employed.
James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960)
I Want YOU for U. S. Army, c. 1917 I Want You, February 1917
Poster, lithographic print photomechanical print
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. Division Washington, D.C.
The magazine cover illustration came first, it was based upon a popular icon of the government popularly used earlier in the 19th century. Seeing the image’s strength, Flagg transformed it into the most famous WWI recruiting poster even before the U.S. entered that war; it was reformatted and used again in WWII.
SEM (1863-1934)
For The Liberty of the World, c. 1917
30 in. x 46 in.
C. R. Miller
Never!, c. 1943
27 in. x 20 in.
SEM was the moniker of the French caricaturist Georges Goursat. This very famous poster transformed the European World War I and expanded it into our hemisphere. Pour la liberté du monde By placing the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty at the edge of the water over the horizon, S.E.M. reminded America that the war’s allied defense was for ‘the liberty of the whole world’ and not just western Europe as the poster says.
C. R. Miller’s reuse of the statue of liberty in his WWII poster, Never! Shows Liberty’s light has gong out and she is shackled in chains. The hold colors of the background make this unthinkable future feel even more dangerous.
J C Leyendecker (1874-1951)
New Year’s Cover, 1940
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post (December 30, 1939)
Leyendecker posed this New Year baby wearing a gas mask, carrying a military ammunition bag and holding a large black umbrella. A storm was definitely coming. By 1932 The National Socialist German Workers' Party, a.k.a. the Nazi Party held the reigns of power in the German Reichstag. Led by Adolph Hitler whose power was reinforced by the SA (Sturmabteilung), the paramilitary unit of the Party (brownshirts) Germany underwent nazification.
Starting in 1938, Hitler began his aggressive quest for Lebensraum,or more living space. Without engaging in war, Germany was able to annex neighboring Austria and carve up Czechoslovakia (takeover of the Sudetenland). At last, a reluctant Britain and France threatened war if Germany targeted Poland and/or Romania. In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France had no choice but to declare war on Germany. World War II had begun.
J C Leyendecker (1874-1951)
New Years Cover, 1941
Cover Illus. for the Saturday Evening Post (January 4, 1941)
Clenched fist is used as a gesture of defiance or solidarity. It dates back to the salute of Rotfrontkämpferbund, a paramilitary organization of the Communist Party of Germany before World War II
Industrial Workers of the World, pub. in Solidarity, June 30,1917
The armoured fist is the symbol of armoured cavalry. This derives from the fact that armoured cavalry are good for putting stress on a single point until the line breaks
The stamp on the baby’s back reads, “Received January 1941”
AMERICAN WAR BOND POSTER COMPETITION WINNER.
R. Hoe & Co., Inc., won the National War Poster Competition held under auspices of artists for victory, Inc. - Council for democracy –
Unknown artist
This is Prussianism!
Advertisement for the Fourth Liberty Loan
World War II posters helped to mobilize a nation. They were inexpensive to produce and ever-present in everyday life. The poster made was an ideal agent for making war aims the personal mission of every citizen. Government agencies, businesses, and private organizations issued an array of poster images linking the military front with the home front.
“These jobs will have to be glorified as a patriotic war service if American women are to be persuaded to take them and stick to them. Their importance to a nation engaged in total war must be convincingly presented.”
--Basic Program Plan for Womanpower
Office of War Information
In the face of acute wartime labor shortages, women were needed in the defense industries, the civilian service, and even the Armed Forces. Despite the continuing 20th century trend of women entering the workforce, publicity campaigns were aimed at those women who had never before held jobs. Poster and film images glorified and glamorized the roles of working women and suggested that a woman’s femininity need not be sacrificed. Whether fulfilling their duty in the home, factory, office, or military, women were portrayed as attractive confident, and resolved to do their part to win the war.
Adolph Treidler (1886-1981)
She’s a WOW, 1942
28.5” x 40”
Super scarce and desirable Woman Ordnance Worker poster “The Girl He Left Behind”. Shows a Rosie the Riveter-type in red bandana; there were a number of variants done during the war, this is among the most desirable.
Adolph Treidler (1886-1981)
For every fighter a woman worker
30” x 40”
YWCA poster with woman worker theme, this category has become extremely collectable in recent years. Triedler produced fine posters in both World Wars. This poster has a wonderful image of a young girl in work overalls holding a biplane and bomb! The artist Arthur Triedler later married the model for this poster. The yeomen World War I efforts of women gave a real boost to women’s rights and the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote was ratified shortly after the war.
Winslow Homer (1836-1910 )
Our Watering Places—The Empty Sleeve at Newport, 1865
Harper's Weekly IX, # 452 (August 26, 1865): 533
Wood engraving
DAM, Gift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1988-47
This illustration accompanied a story in Harper’s Weekly, “The Empty Sleeve at Newport; or, Why Edna Ackland Learned to Drive.” Captain Harry Ash, having lost an arm, returned from the war seeking his love, Edna Ackland, who, he discovered, had learned to drive a horse and buggy in his absence. The returning men confronted women who had adjusted to changed circumstances and sometimes took a stronger role in the relationship. Captain Ash and Edna Ackland resolve their misunderstandings as she explains to him, “I must be left and right hand [for you] also, should it be God’s pleasure . . . And I learned, as I have learned many things, for love of you.” The dominance of the nineteenth-century male prevails when Ash exclaims in the end: “Yet, for all that, his eye is on the road and his voice guides her; so that, in reality, she is only his left hand, and he, the husband, drives.”
Winslow Homer (1836-1910 )
The Morning Bell – Drawn by Winslow Homer
In Harper’s Weekly XVII, # 885 (December 13, 1873): 1116
wood engraving
DAM, gift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1988-41
Labor outside the home was on the increase after the Civil War and signified the growing industrialization of the country. With lunch pails in hand, six workers (four women, a man, and a boy) head across a bridge for work. Atop the three-story clapboard building on the opposite bank a large bell is being pulled by an unseen ringer calling the workers to their jobs. An anonymous poem of the same title precedes the image in the magazine and tells the tale.
J. Howard Miller (1918-2004)
We Can Do It!, 1942
Prod. by Westinghouse for the War Production Co-Ordinating Committee
NARA Still Picture Branch (NWDNS-179-WP-1563)
While today scholars may dispute over how many women were involved in the war effort and how much effect their contribution made, [See James J. Kimble and Lester C. Olson, “Visual Rhetoric Representing Rosie the Riveter” Myth and Misconception in J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” Poster” in Rhetoric & Public Affairs v.9 no. 4 (2006): 533-570.] at the time various posters sent a different message. In a 1944 republication of Rudolf Modley’s A History of the War (Penguin, 1941, 1944): 120, there is a graph of women’s absorption into the work force. The indicated that in July of 1940 almost 11 million American women were part of the national workforce and that by July of 1944 there would be an estimated 18 million women in the national workforce.
On the collar of her shirt is a Westinghouse badge which employees were required to wear on the factory floor. The Badge not only had a woman’s face on it, it also bore the identification number of the worker who wore it.
This poster was one of many produced by Westinghouse to help increase production, to decrease absenteeism, and to avoid strikes, not to serve as a recruiting target to bring women into the factories. Instead it reflects Westinghouse’s concern with labor-management relations.