Freedom from Fear
by Norman Rockwell

March 13, 1943 Issue
of The Saturday Evening Post
The Four Freedoms Series

Norman Rockwell's illustration Freedom from Fear appeared on the pages of The Saturday Evening Post on February 20, 1943...
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This was the fourth and last installment of Rockwell's famous Four Freedoms series.

The Four Freedoms paintings were inspired by a speech given before the United States Congress on January 6, 1941 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In that speech, Roosevelt enumerated four basic freedoms to which every person was entitled.

The first was freedom of speech. Second was freedom to worship. Third was freedom from want. Fourth was freedom from fear.

The images and articles were presented in The Saturday Evening Post in the same order as President Roosevelt presented them in his speech.

Here is more about Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms, including Freedom from Fear.

Norman Rockwell's Freedom from Fear

Rockwell was worried that this painting would appear to portray smugness that American children slept safely while the children of the rest of the world lived in a battlefield. He didn't want to chance alienating our allies in the war.

Rockwell went into a lot of detail with this picture. He actually had The Bennington Banner, in Bennington, Vermont, print up
a prop newspaper with a war bombing headline. He was a real stickler for realism in his paintings.

Rockwell used his Vermont neighbors as models in this picture. The model for the father in this picture is said to appear in all four of the Four Freedoms paintings.

This painting shows a father and mother tucking their two children in at bedtime.

The children's mother carefully places their covers just right to keep them warm. She is careful not to wake them.

The father, with a concerned yet caring look look on his face, holds a newspaper and his reading glasses in one hand. The headline of the newspaper father is holding reads "Bombings K... Horror Hit..." This was published during the time that London was being bombed by Nazi Germany.

No doubt, the father is relieved that his family is not living in war-torn Europe. All the fathers in America were similarly relieved. Rockwell's painting made the parents of America more aware of their relief.

Norman Rockwell's work was usually topical to current events, and Freedom from Fear was no exception.

This picture is taken from Office of War Information poster OWI Poster Number 46 O-511887...
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