Freedom from Want is the third of the Four Freedoms , a series of four oil paintings by American artist Norman Rockwell. The works were inspired by the Four Freedoms articulated in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address. The painting was published in the March 6, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post . It depicts a group of people gathered around a dinner table for a holiday meal, all of whom were friends and family of Rockwell; they were photographed individually and painted into the scene. Freedom from Want has become an iconic representation of Thanksgiving and family gatherings in general, and has had a wide array of adaptations and other uses. Popular then and now in the United States, it caused resentment in Europe where the masses were enduring wartime hardship. The work is highly regarded as an example of mastery of the challenges of painting in white on a white background and as one of Rockwell's most famous works. ( Full article... )
November 27 : Thanksgiving in the United States (2025)
| | The 1884 United States presidential election was held in November 1884 between Grover Cleveland of the Democratic Party, James G. Blaine of the Republican Party, and two third-party candidates. The election was narrowly won by Cleveland, who won 219 Electoral College votes to Blaine's 182, ending a run of of six consecutive Republican victories. The issue of personal character featured strongly during the 1884 campaign. Blaine had been prevented from getting the Republican presidential nomination during the previous two elections because of the stigma of a set of letters that he had written, while Cleveland was perceived as having high personal integrity. This campaign advertisement for Blaine, captioned "Another voice for Cleveland", was published in the New York magazine The Judge on September 27, 1884, and aimed to shift this balance and attack Cleveland's morals by alleging that he had fathered an illegitimate child while he was a lawyer in Buffalo, New York. The chromolithograph illustration depicts a weeping woman holding a baby who cries out "I want my pa!" as Cleveland walks past. Cleveland's campaign responded that he had formed a connection with the woman in question and had assumed responsibility for the child, but that his paternity was unproven. Illustration credit: Frank Beard; restored by Adam Cuerden Recently featured: |