L-R, top-to-bottom: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want.
"That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb."
A 1943 series of four oil paintings by American illustrator Norman Rockwell, created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine and inspired by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech during his 1941 State of the Union address. In said speech, Roosevelt called for a better world with these four essential freedoms.
The four paintings, in order of publication, are:
- Freedom of Speech (February 20) depicts a town meeting where a man stands up to give his opinion.
- Freedom of Worship (February 27) portrays eight people of varying religions engaged in prayer, "each according to the dictates of his own conscience".
- Freedom from Want (March 6) shows a matriarch bringing out a Thanksgiving turkey to a table of eager family members.
- Freedom from Fear (March 13) shows oblivious children being tucked into bed by their mother as their father holds a newspaper headlining The Blitz.
The paintings were widely seen during and after World War II, shown in a touring exhibit around the country (in part sponsored by the U.S. Department of Treasury) and also used to advertise the sales of war bonds. Now considered some of Rockwell's most seminal work, they hang in his eponymous museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Tropes in these paintings:
- Aside Glance: The man in the bottom right of Freedom from Want is looking cheekily at the viewer.
- Children Are Innocent: The theme of Freedom from Fear. World War II is raging around the family, but the children are implied to be innocent of the horrors as they slumber peacefully.
- Comforting Comforter: In Freedom from Fear a couple puts a blanket over their sleeping children as the Blitz goes on, implicitly shielding the children from the terrors of the war.
- Prayer Pose: The people in the bottom row of Freedom from Worship. The Catholic woman is clasping a rosary in her hands, while the Protestant woman and a man behind her of indeterminate religion have their palms clapped together.
- Thanksgiving Turkey: Freedom from Want illustrates a Thanksgiving dinner. How do we know? The matriarch is putting out a large cooked turkey.
- Working-Class Hero: The implication behind Freedom of Speech. Through his clothes and the clothes of that around him, Rockwell implies that the subject is a blue-collar worker who is the lone voice of dissent in a crowd of white-collar men. The further implication is that because he has freedom of speech, he isn't afraid to speak his mind.
