What Are the Four Freedoms and Why Did Norman Rockwell Paint Them?

“The Four Freedoms”, an important set of freedoms that set the stage for a collection of Norman Rockwell paintings were first discussed in a speech by President Franklin Roosevelt on January 6, 1941 according to The Institute for the Study of Civic Values. “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..…The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own…. The third is freedom from want, which…means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants…. The fourth is freedom from fear, which…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.” President Roosevelt spoke this in the midst of World War II. 

Norman Rockwell illustrated these paintings two years later. He offered the paintings to the government to be used as posters for the war effort but they were refused. However they were published in the Saturday Evening Post. Ben Hibbs, the editor of the paper said, “Those four pictures quickly became the best-known and most-appreciated paintings of that era. They appeared right at a time when the war was going against us on the battle fronts, and the American people needed the inspirational message which they conveyed so forcefully and beautifully.”