Freedom from Fear by Norman Rockwell

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

Norman Rockwell's Freedom from Fear appeared on the pages of The Saturday Evening Post on February 20, 1943.

This was the fourth and last installment of Rockwell's famous Four Freedoms series.

The painting was also originally reproduced on a poster promoting the sale of war bonds during World War Two.

Freedom from Fear has also been reproduced in several Rockwell Books: page 125 of The Norman Rockwell Album, illustration 207 of Norman Rockwell's America by Christopher Finch, illustration 388 of Norman Rockwell: Artist and Illustrator by Thomas Buechner, page 149 of Norman Rockwell: Illustrator by Arthur L. Guptill, page 33 of Norman Rockwell, Storyteller With A Brush, page 86 of Norman Rockwell: A Sixty Year Retrospective by Thomas Buechner and page 771 and Plate 62 of Norman Rockwell, A Definitive Catalogue by Laurie Norton Moffatt.

The illustration also appears in The Norman Rockwell Poster Book and 50 Norman Rockwell Favorites.

This painting also appears on page 51 of A Treasury of the Saturday Evening Post. A Treasury of the Saturday Evening Post also reproduces the original Post article by Stephen Vincent Benét that was published with the illustration.

The original oil on canvas painting, 45.75 x 35.5 inches or 116 x 90 cm, is housed in the Norman Rockwell Museum of Stockbridge, Mass.

Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms Paintings

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 famous and stirring 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.

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 was also printed on Office of War Information poster OWI Poster Number 46 O-511887.

The captions on the original war poster read as follows: "OURS... to fight for " above and "FREEDOM FROM WANT" underneath the illustration.

Norman Rockwell's Freedom from Fear (1943)
Copyright © 1943 Saturday Evening Post & Curtis Publishing Company