Four Freedoms (Norman Rockwell) - Production

Production

In 1941 the United States Government had three agencies responsible for war propaganda: The Office of Facts and Figures (OFF), The Division of Information of the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), and Office of Government Reports (OGR). The OFF was responsible for commissioned artwork and for assembling a corps of writers, led by Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish. By mid 1942, the Office of War Information determined that despite the efforts of OFF in distributing pamphlets, posters, displays and other media, only a third of the general public was familiar with Roosevelt's four freedoms and at most one in fifty could enumerate them. The four freedoms had been a "campaign to educate Americans about participation in World War II".

Rockwell remembered a scene of a local town meeting in which one person spoke out in lone dissent, but was accorded the floor as a matter of protocol. A vision struck him to depict this scene to represent Freedom of Speech, and then in 1942 Rockwell decided to use his Vermont neighbors as models for an inspirational set of posters depicting the themes laid out by Roosevelt the previous year in a Four Freedoms series. He spent three days making charcoal sketches of the series, and the series took seven months to create. Models included a Mrs. Harrington who became the devout old woman in Freedom of Worship and a man named Jim Martin who appears in each painting in the series. The intention was to remind America what they were fighting for: freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear. All of the paintings used a muted palette and are devoid of the use of vermilion that Rockwell is known for.

Rockwell's patriotic gesture was to travel to Washington, D.C. and volunteer his free services to the government for this cause. As Rockwell bounced from one government office to the next he received no indication of interest by the government. In fact, the Office of War Information told him that poster art like that used in World War I was not welcome because the government intended to use real artists instead this time. Rockwell returned to the Saturday Evening Post and got an enthusiastic response from editor Ben Hibbs to publish his designs. Some sources published after Rockwell's death question whether the government was truly as discouraging as Rockwell claimed. They cite an encouraging April 23, 1943 correspondence with Thomas D. Mabry of the Office of War Information (a former Executive Director of the Museum of Modern Art). At the time, the three government propaganda agencies were disjointed, and they were not unified under the Office of War Information (OWI) until June 13, 1945 by a Presidential Executive Order. Furthermore, the writers division, led by MacLeish, was under pressure for failing to deliver a message intelligible to people of varying intelligence. There was also significant turmoil in the OWI because a faction had supported work by Ben Shahn, but Shahn's work would not be used extensively for propaganda because it lacked general appeal.

Upon publication The Saturday Evening Post received millions of reprint requests. Rockwell's version of the story is that only after the public demanded reprints did the Office of War Information get involved by producing 2.5 million sets of Four Freedoms posters, By the end of the war, 4 million posters had been printed. Both the Freedom from Fear and Freedom from Want posters had the leading caption "ours. . .to fight for" and the Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship had the leading caption "Buy War Bonds" and the word "Save" before the respective freedom. There is also a 1946 lithograph version of the 1943 paintings with all four paintings under the heading "ours. . .to fight for".

Between 1941 and 1946, the United States Department of the Treasury conducted eight War Loan Drives to promote the sale of war Bonds to finance America's World War II efforts. The government used several forms of solicitation, advertising and marketing, such as aircraft carrier exhibits as well as direct appeal from all the five-star generals and admirals (George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Jackson D. Arnold, Ernest King, Chester W. Nimitz and William D. Leahy) in the Seventh War Loan Drive, or a commemorative bond image of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Eighth War Loan Drive. The marketing attempts were quite varied even within a single War Loan Drive. In 1943, the Saturday Evening Post donated the Four Freedoms to the Second War Loan Drive. Rockwell's Four Freedoms Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear were first published on February 20, February 27, March 6 and March 13, 1943 along with commissioned essays from leading American writers and historians (Booth Tarkington, Will Durant, Carlos Bulosan, and Stephen Vincent Benét, respectively). They measured 45.75 inches (116.2 cm) × 35.5 inches (90 cm) except Freedom of Worship which measures 46.0 inches (116.8 cm) × 35.5 inches (90 cm). After publication of the Rockwell works and subsequent demand for reprints, a tour was planned highlighting the popular paintings as a marketing device for the sale of War Bonds. During the subsequent 16-city tour, which included various celebrities, public officials, and entertainers, approximately 1.2 million people throughout the United States viewed the paintings, which helped to raise $132 billion ($18.533 billion for the Second Loan Drive alone) for the war effort though the sale of war bonds. According to The New Yorker in 1945, the Four Freedoms "were received by the public with more enthusiasm, perhaps, than any other paintings in the history of American art". Rockwell is widely credited with contributing to the success of the war effort.

The Four Freedoms were reproduced in posters by the United States Government Printing Office and on postage stamps by the United States Postal Service. The stamps are not to be confused with the February 12, 1943 one-cent Four Freedoms Postage Stamp Issue by another artist. The Rockwell versions were issued in a set of four fifty-cent stamps in 1994, the 100th anniversary of Rockwell's birth. Freedom from Want was included as the cover image of the 1946 book Norman Rockwell, Illustrator that was written when Rockwell was "at the height of his fame as America's most popular illustrator". By 1972, this 1946 publication was in its seventh printing. Although the paintings were originally intimately connected to Roosevelt and the American cause in World War II, the paintings have now developed an independent iconic identity in textbooks and on ties as well as in the cultural and social fabric. Eventually, 25 million people bought Rockwell's Four Freedoms prints by the end of the 20th century.