Every Girl Pulling for Victory - Edward Penfield

Edward Penfield's Every Girl Pulling for Victory (1918) is an American First World War recruitment poster created during the final year of the conflict. It depicts a young woman in sailor-style clothing rowing a boat emblazoned with the word "Victory," a direct call for women to contribute to the war effort through factory work, nursing, agriculture, and clerical service.

Historical context

By 1918, the United States had been at war for just over a year. With millions of men deployed to the Western Front, the government launched a coordinated propaganda campaign to mobilise women into roles that kept the economy and military supply chain running. The Division of Pictorial Publicity, a volunteer corps of illustrators and designers led by Charles Dana Gibson, produced hundreds of posters to rally public support. Penfield's image sits within this tradition, using the metaphor of rowing together to frame women's wartime labour as collective, patriotic action.

The poster's colour palette of red, white, and blue is deliberate, reinforcing national identity. The composition is stripped back and direct: one figure, one boat, one word. There is no battlefield imagery. Instead, the message centres on civilian participation, the idea that victory depended on everyone, soldiers included but far from alone.

The rowing metaphor carries specific connotations. Rowing was associated with elite universities and collective discipline; each stroke must be synchronised for the boat to move. Penfield transplants this idea of coordinated effort from the boathouse to the factory floor and the hospital ward, asking women to pull together with the same precision. The poster was distributed widely during 1918 and remains one of the most frequently reproduced examples of American war propaganda in textbooks and exhibitions.

About Edward Penfield (1866–1925)

Often called the father of the American poster, Penfield served as art director of Harper's Magazine from 1890 to 1901, producing over 100 cover designs during that period. His style drew on Japanese woodblock printing and the French affiche tradition: flat areas of colour, bold outlines, and minimal detail. He became one of the most recognised illustrators of the American Art Nouveau movement, and his wartime posters remain some of the most widely studied examples of early 20th-century graphic propaganda.

This fine art reproduction is printed on museum-grade stock, faithful to the original's bold colours and graphic simplicity.