“Freedom from Want” by Norman Rockwell in “The Saturday Evening Post,” March 6, 1943. Number three in the Four Freedoms series.

            “Freedom from Want” was created in November 1942 and published on March 6, 1943.  All of the people in the picture were friends and family of Rockwell in Arlington, Vermont, who were photographed individually and painted into the scene.  It depicts a group of people gathered around a dinner table for a holiday meal.  Having been partially created on Thanksgiving Day, it has become an iconic representation for Americans of the Thanksgiving holiday and family gatherings in general.  The image was popular at the time in the United States and remains so, but it caused resentment in Europe where the masses were enduring wartime hardship.  Carlos Bulosan’s accompanying essay speaks on behalf of those who were enduring hardships here at home, and it thrust him into prominence.  

Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” – “Freedom of Speech,” “Freedom of Worship,” “Freedom from Want,” and “Freedom from Fear” – were first published in “The Saturday Evening Post” over four consecutive weeks in 1943, alongside essays by prominent thinkers of the day (Booth Tarkington, Will Durant, Carlos Bulosan, and Stephen Vincent Benet, respectively). The four freedoms refer to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s January 1941 Four Freedoms State of the Union address in which he identified essential human rights that should be universally protected. 

When the series was published, “The Saturday Evening Post” received millions of reprint requests, as did the U.S. Government’s Office of War Information.  In response, the Post produced 25,000 sets, including both the essays and full-color reproductions of the paintings, and the Government Printing Office produced 2.5 million sets of Four Freedom posters. They were instrumental in the U.S. Government War Bond Drive and, by the end of the war, 4 million sets of posters had been printed.    [Source: Wikipedia]

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Taken on: November 24, 2021

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