Freedom of Speech is a painting of Norman Rockwell and is one of his series of four paintings called the Four Freedoms. Rockwell was inspired to make these paintings since he heard the Four Freedoms Speech of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt of January 6, 1941.
Background
This painting was made public in The Saturday Evening Post of February 20, 1943, along with an essay of Booth Tarkington. The other paintings of the Four Freedoms series are Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear, and were shown in other editions of the paper.
In this painting he shows a local meeting where one person speaks out his own, opposite opinion, while the others present give him the freedom of speech as a matter of protocol. Rockwell undertook four efforts to end up with this painting. He took Vermont neighbors as models for his series.
Rockwell needed four attempts to end up with this version of the painting. In former versions he found that the attention was confused because he had used to many objects. Furthermore he did not like the place of the main person in the picture.
The paintings toured through the United States with the motto Buy War Bonds. All together 1.2 million Americans saw the paintings and 132 million dollar was collected to be used in World War II.[1]
The painting can be found in the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
References
- Parts of this article are derived from the article on English Wikipedia
