Norman Rockwell’s Iconic Four Freedoms, Inspired by FDR and Issued by the Office of War Information

This complete and scarce suite of posters in their largest format illustrates the Four Freedoms articulated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his State of the Union speech on January 6, 1941. Rockwell’s iconic series of paintings originally appeared on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post in February and March 1943. Two (from Want and from Fear) display the message, “OURS...to fight for” at the top, and the other two (of Speech and of Worship) display the message, “BUY WAR BONDS,” at the bottom.

During the 1930s, many Americans believed that the nation’s involvement in World War I had been a mistake. World War II began in September 1939. By December 1940, Europe was largely dominated by Adolf Hitler and Germany’s Nazi war machine. Only Great Britain and its worldwide empire stood against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. On January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his eighth State of the Union Address, spelling out the Four Freedoms on which to found a new world. Combatting isolationist policies, FDR insisted that America needed to support universal values, not just for moral reasons, but for the security and safety of the country. He pointed out that Hitler and other dictators, despite their promises, would never support true freedoms.

Roosevelt said, “Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety....

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

“The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.

“The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

“The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

“The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

“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.”

The Office of War Information, created in 1942, used the Four Freedoms speech to rally public support. In 1943, Norman Rockwell created a series of four oil paintings, each based on one of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. It took him seven months to complete the paintings, and he lost ten pounds over that time. Rockwell used friends and neighbors from Vermont and Maine as models for the paintings. When President Roosevelt viewed the paintings in February 1943, he wrote to Rockwell, “I think you have done a superb job in bringing home to the plain, everyday citizen the plain, everyday truths behind the Four Freedoms.... I congratulate you not alone on the execution but also for the spirit which impelled you to make this contribution to the common cause of a freer, happier world.”

Rockwell’s paintings appeared as covers for consecutive issues of The Saturday Evening Post, the most widely read magazine in the nation. The issues also included essays by prominent intellectuals. The paintings became Rockwell’s most popular, and the original paintings were the highlight of a touring exhibition to sixteen cities that encouraged the sale of war bonds, raising over $132 million. By the end of the war, four million posters had been printed by The Saturday Evening Post and the Office of War Information to meet the public demand for reprints.

Although Roosevelt’s speech was broadly popular, anti-war opponents criticized it as simply a justification for Roosevelt’s New Deal social programs, which many conservatives opposed, at least until Pearl Harbor. From that point on, the Four Freedoms would resonate for decades. They became part of the charter of the United Nations and were incorporated into the preamble of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

★ Norman Rockwell. Group of four color lithographic posters illustrating “Four Freedoms,” from oil paintings. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1943. Office of War Information Poster Nos. 43, 44, 45, and 46. 4 pp., each 40 x 56 in. #26372.99