Content note: Painting shows skulls, a burning scene and a distressed body in a war landscape. This object is shown as it was published. Why
The Sowers
Painted poster, landscape format: a gaunt, bare-chested figure in a helmet strides over broken ground and scatters skulls from a sack like seed, with a dead tree, a burning field and a red sky behind. The imagery of death as a crop is a fear-appeal about the enemy's war, with no slogan beyond the title.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1941
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Thomas Hart Benton (artist); issuing body not printed
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Mixed
- Regime
- Roosevelt Administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Theme
- War and the military
- Event
- World War II
- Regime
- Roosevelt administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, retrieved October 4, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work)
Thomas Hart Benton. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-123 (NAID 513571).
Text on the object
The Sowers [imprint: Painted by the Distinguished American Artist, Thomas Benton] [imprint: LITHO. IN U.S.A.] [signature: illegible]
