Freedom from Want

The painting shows an aproned matriarch presenting a roasted turkey to a family of several generations,^[9] in Rockwell's idealistic presentation of family values. The patriarch looks on with fondness and approval from the head of the table,^[10] which is the central element of the painting. Its creased tablecloth shows that this is a special occasion for "sharing what we have with those we love", according to Lennie Bennett.^[8] The table has a bowl of fruit, celery, pickles, and what appears to be cranberry sauce. There is a covered silver serving dish that would traditionally hold potatoes, according to Richard Halpern,^[11] but Bennett describes this as a covered casserole dish.^[8] The servings are less prominent than the presentation of white linen, white plates and water-filled glasses. The people in the painting are not yet eating, and the painting contrasts the empty plates and vacant space in their midst with images of overabundance.^[12]

Production

In mid-June Rockwell sketched in charcoal the Four Freedoms and sought commission from the Office of War Information (OWI). He was rebuffed by an official who said, "The last war, you illustrators did the posters. This war, we're going to use fine arts men, real artists."^[14] However, Saturday Evening Post editor Ben Hibbs recognized the potential of the set and encouraged Rockwell to produce them right away.^[14] By early fall, the authors for the Four Freedoms had submitted their essays. Rockwell was concerned that Freedom from Want did not match Bulosan's text. In mid-November, Hibbs wrote Rockwell pleading that he not scrap his third work to start over. Hibbs alleviated Rockwell's thematic concern; he explained that the illustrations only needed to address the same topic rather than be in unison. Hibbs pressured Rockwell into completing his work by warning him that the magazine was on the verge of being compelled by the government to place restrictions on four-color printing, so Rockwell had better get the work published before relegation to halftone printing.^[15]

In 1942, Rockwell decided to use neighbors as models for the series.^[16] In Freedom from Want, he used his living room for the setting and relied on neighbors for advice, critical commentary, and their service as his models.^[14] For Freedom from Want, Rockwell photographed his cook as she presented the turkey on Thanksgiving Day 1942.^[13] He said that he painted the turkey on that day and that, unlike Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship, this painting was not difficult to execute.^[17] Rockwell's wife Mary is in this painting, and the family cook, Mrs. Thaddeus Wheaton,^[18] is serving the turkey, which the Rockwell family ate that day.^[19] The nine adults and two children depicted were photographed in Rockwell's studio and painted into the scene later.^[20][21] The models are (clockwise from Wheaton) Lester Brush, Florence Lindsey, Rockwell's mother Nancy, Jim Martin, Mr. Wheaton, Mary Rockwell, Charles Lindsey, and the Hoisington children.^[13] Jim Martin appears in all four paintings in the series.^[22] Shirley Hoisington, the girl at the end of the table, was six at the time.^[23]

After the Four Freedoms series ran in The Saturday Evening Post, the magazine made sets of reproductions available to the public and received 25,000 orders. Additionally the OWI, which six months earlier had declined to employ Rockwell to promote the Four Freedoms, requested 2.5 million sets of posters featuring the Four Freedoms for its war-bond drive in early 1943.^[24]

Rockwell bequeathed this painting to a custodianship that became the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and it is now part of the museum's permanent collection. Rockwell lived in Stockbridge from 1953 until his death in 1978.^[8]

Reactions

Freedom from Want is considered one of Rockwell's finest works.^[20] Of the four paintings in the Four Freedoms, it is the one most often seen in art books with critical review and commentary. Although all were intended to promote patriotism in a time of war, Freedom from Want became a symbol of "family togetherness, peace, and plenty", according to Linda Rosenkrantz, who compares it to "a 'Hallmark' Christmas".^[25] Embodying nostalgia for an enduring American theme of holiday celebration,^[26] the painting is not exclusively associated with Thanksgiving, and is sometimes known as I'll Be Home for Christmas.^[27] The abundance and unity it shows were the idyllic hope of a post-war world, and the image has been reproduced in various formats.^[25]

According to author Amy Dempsey, during the

To art critic Robert Hughes, the painting represents the theme of family continuity, virtue, homeliness, and abundance without extravagance in a Puritan tone, as confirmed by the modest beverage choice of water.^[34] Historian Lizabeth Cohen says that by depicting this freedom as a celebration in the private family home rather than a worker with a job or a government protecting the hungry and homeless, Rockwell suggests that ensuring this freedom was not as much a government responsibility as something born from participation in the mass consumer economy.^[31]

One of the notable and artistically challenging elements of the image is Rockwell's use of white-on-white: white plates sitting on a white tablecloth.

Jim Martin, positioned in the lower right, gives a coy and perhaps mischievous glance back at the viewer.[35] He is a microcosm of the entire scene in which no one appears to be giving thanks in a traditional manner of a Thanksgiving dinner.^[35] Solomon finds it a departure from previous depictions of Thanksgiving in that the participants do not lower their heads or raise their hands in the traditional poses of prayer. She sees it as an example of treating American traditions in both sanctified and casual ways.^[36] Theologian David Brown sees gratitude as implicit in the painting,^[37] while Kenneth Bendiner writes that Rockwell was mindful of the Last Supper and that the painting's perspective echoes its rendition by Tintoretto.^[38]

Essay

Freedom from Want was published with an essay by

Freedom from Want had previously been less entwined in the standard liberalism philosophies of the western world than the other three freedoms (speech, fear, and religion); this freedom added economic liberty as a societal aspiration.^[43] In his essay, Bulosan treats negative liberties as positive liberties by suggesting that Americans be "given equal opportunity to serve themselves and each other according to their needs and abilities", an echo of Karl Marx's "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs".^[44] In the final paragraph of the essay, the phrase "The America we hope to see is not merely a physical but also a spiritual and intellectual world" describes an egalitarian America.^[44] In a voice likened to Steinbeck's in works such as The Grapes of Wrath,^[41][43] Bulosan's essay spoke up for those who struggled to survive in the capitalist democracy and was regarded as "haunting and sharp" against the backdrop of Rockwell's feast of plenty. It proposed that while citizens had obligations to the state, the state had an obligation to provide a basic level of subsistence.^[41] Unlike Roosevelt, Bulosan presented the case that the New Deal had not already granted freedom from want as it did not guarantee Americans the essentials of life.^[40]

References in popular culture

Visual arts