Freedom of Worship or Freedom to Worship is the second of the Four Freedoms oil paintings produced by the American artist Norman Rockwell. The series was based on the goals known as the Four Freedoms enunciated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of the United States from 1933 to 1945, in his State of the Union Address delivered on January 6, 1941. Rockwell considered this painting and Freedom of Speech the most successful of the series. Freedom of Worship was published in the February 27, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post alongside an essay by philosopher Will Durant.
The painting shows the profiles of eight heads in a modest space. The various figures represent people of different faiths in a moment of prayer. Particularly, three figures on the bottom row (right to left): a man with his head covered carrying a religious book who is Jewish, an older woman who is Protestant, and a younger woman with a well-lit face holding rosary beads who is Catholic.[10] In 1966, Rockwell used Freedom of Worship to show his admiration for John F. Kennedy in a Look story illustration entitled JFK's Bold Legacy. The work depicts Kennedy in profile in a composition similar to Freedom of Worship along with Peace Corps volunteers.[11]
Production
The original draft of Freedom of Worship was set in a barbershop.
The original version of the painting was set in a barbershop with patrons of a variety of religions and races all waiting their turn in the barber's chair.[12] His first workup was a 41-by-33-inch (104cm ×84cm) oil on canvas depicting tolerance as "the basis for a democracy's religious diversity". It included a Jew being served by a Protestant barber as a black man and a Roman Catholic priest awaited the barber's services.[13] The problem was painting easily recognizable depictions of different religions and races because there was little agreement on what a person of a certain religion should look like.[14] However, as he attempted to clarify the characters' depictions he found himself resorting to offensive overexaggeration, especially of the non-clerical characters. Making a Jewish man appear stereotypically Semitic, making a white customer preppy and relegating the black man to agrarian workman attire bogged down the work without speaking on behalf of the government as it should.[15] Rockwell's intended theme was religious tolerance, but he felt the original composition did not successfully make this point.[10]
In June 1942, Post editor Ben Hibbs became supportive of Rockwell's Four Freedoms sketches,[7][16] and gave Rockwell two months to complete the works.[17] By October, the Post was worried about Rockwell's progress on the Four Freedoms and sent their art editor to Arlington to evaluate. At that time Rockwell was working on Freedom of Worship, his second painting in the series.[18] Rockwell spent two months (October and most of November 1942)[10] on this work, that was inspired by the phrase "Each according to the dictates of his own conscience." His Arlington, Vermont, neighbors served as his models: Three months pregnant with her hair upbraided, Rose Hoyt posed as a Catholic with a rosary,[19] even though she was actually Protestant of the Episcopal Church.[10][19] Other models were a Mrs. Harrington, Rockwell's carpenter Walter Squires, Squire's wife Clara Squires (at the right-hand edge), Winfield Secoy, and Jim Martin (center).[19] His final version relied on other visual clues, including a rosary and a religious book. The work had dark-skinned black worshipers juxtaposed on the edges. This placement did not rock the boat with The Post who had not yet featured blacks prominently on its pages. Rockwell said he made these ethnics palatable by "'furtively' painting the face of the black woman at the top; the man at the bottom, with his fez, was too obviously foreign to offend."[20] The image is commonly enhanced and often darkened in reproduction because it uses a color combination of soft greys, beiges and browns. The paint was applied thinly, which allows the weave of the canvas to contribute to the image.[9]
Rockwell has stated that he feels hands are second only to heads in importance to the expression of a story. He stated with regards to Freedom of Worship, "I depended on the hands alone to convey about half of the message I wish to put over."[21] Rockwell's extensive effort on this work was due to his belief that religion "is an extremely delicate subject. It is so easy to hurt so many people's feelings."[20]
Critical review
Post editor Ben Hibbs said of Speech and Worship, "To me they are great human documents in the form of paint and canvas. A great picture, I think is one which moves and inspires millions of people. The Four Freedoms did– and do."[22]Walt Disney wrote, "I thought [Rockwell's] Four Freedoms were great. I especially loved the Freedom of Worship and the composition and symbolism expressed in it."[23] Rockwell believed that Freedom of Worship and Freedom of Speech were his better results in the series.[9]Laura Claridge has written that the inspirational phrase "Each according to the dictates of his own conscience" is a "platitude that suggests the plurality of Rockwell's own thoughts on religion: its likely source was a phrase included in the Thirteen Articles of Faith by Joseph Smith."[20] In fact, Rockwell repeatedly asked colleagues about possible sources of the quote and was not told about Smith's writing until after the series was published.[24] The expression "according to the dictates of his conscience" (or a similar variation) was used in many United States state constitutions in the eighteenth century.[25]
Critical review of the painting shows that some practitioners of particular faiths are disappointed by the acceptance of all faiths expressed in Freedom of Religion.[8] Claridge feels that
the tight amalgam of faces... and even the crepey skin on elderly hands, which have become the objects of worship, push the theme over the edge from idealistic tolerance into gooey sentiment, where human differences seem caught up in a magical moment of dispensation from the Light. The restraint demanded by art that deals with heightened emotion is lacking.[20]
Claridge stated that the earlier version was "clean, impressively sparse, in counterpoise to a dense narrative content. Beautifully painted even at the preliminary oil sketch stage."[20] Murray and McCabe note that the work is a divergence from the "storytelling style" that Rockwell is known for.[24]
Deborah Solomon considers the painting the least satisfactory of the series as she feels it is congested and somewhat "didactic".[10] Maureen Hart Hennessey, chief curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum,[26] and curator Anne Knutson consider the scale of the picture that only shows heads and hands in prayer as disruptive.[14] Bruce Cole of The Wall Street Journal noted that Rockwell's "depiction of spectral close-up faces and hands raised in prayer is bland, without any real message about religious freedom—again, no wallop. This is because faith, like the absence of fear and the absence of want, is essentially private, something personal, intangible and unpicturable."[2]
Other
In 2018 Sharon Brous, among others, was on the cover of Time; the cover was based on this painting.[27]
The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on Monday, January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech, he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:
Freedom of speech
Freedom of worship
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear
Norman Percevel Rockwell was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of the country's culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life, calendars, and other illustrations. These works include popular images that reflect the Scout Oath and Scout Law such as The Scoutmaster, A Scout Is Reverent and A Guiding Hand.
The Four Freedoms Award is an annual award presented to "those men and women whose achievements have demonstrated a commitment to those principles which US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed in his Four Freedoms speech to the United States Congress on January 6, 1941, as essential to democracy: "freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear". The annual award is handed out in alternate years in New York City by the Roosevelt Institute to Americans and in Middelburg, Netherlands, by the Roosevelt Stichting to non-Americans.
Clarence Coles Phillips was an American artist and illustrator who signed his early works C. Coles Phillips, but after 1911 worked under the abbreviated name, Coles Phillips. He is known for his stylish images of women and a signature use of negative space in the paintings he created for advertisements and the covers of popular magazines.
The Norman Rockwell Museum is an art museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, United States, dedicated to the art of Norman Rockwell. It is home to the world's largest collection of original Rockwell art. The museum also hosts traveling exhibitions pertaining to American illustration.
American Regionalism is an American realist modern art movement that included paintings, murals, lithographs, and illustrations depicting realistic scenes of rural and small-town America primarily in the Midwest. It arose in the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression, and ended in the 1940s due to the end of World War II and a lack of development within the movement. It reached its height of popularity from 1930 to 1935, as it was widely appreciated for its reassuring images of the American heartland during the Great Depression. Despite major stylistic differences between specific artists, Regionalist art in general was in a relatively conservative and traditionalist style that appealed to popular American sensibilities, while strictly opposing the perceived domination of French art.
Freedom from Fear is the last of the well-known Four Freedoms oil paintings produced by the American artist Norman Rockwell. The series was based on the four goals known as the Four Freedoms, which were enunciated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his State of the Union Address on January 6, 1941. This work was published in the March 13, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post alongside an essay by a prominent thinker of the day, Stephen Vincent Benét. The painting is generally described as depicting American children being tucked into bed by their parents while the Blitz rages across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom.
Willie Gillis, Jr. is a fictional character created by Norman Rockwell for a series of World War II paintings that appeared on the covers of 11 issues of The Saturday Evening Post between 1941 and 1946. Gillis was an everyman with the rank of private whose career was tracked on the cover of the Post from induction through discharge without being depicted in battle. He and his girlfriend were modeled by two of Rockwell's acquaintances.
The Four Freedoms is a series of four oil paintings made in 1943 by the American artist Norman Rockwell. The paintings—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear—are each approximately 45.75 by 35.5 inches, and are now in the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The four freedoms refer to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's January 1941 Four Freedoms State of the Union address, in which he identified essential human rights that should be universally protected. The theme was incorporated into the Atlantic Charter, and became part of the Charter of the United Nations. The paintings were reproduced in The Saturday Evening Post over four consecutive weeks in 1943, alongside essays by prominent thinkers of the day. They became the highlight of a touring exhibition sponsored by The Post and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The exhibition and accompanying sales drives of war bonds raised over $132 million.
Freedom of Speech is the first of the Four Freedoms paintings by Norman Rockwell, inspired by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address, known as Four Freedoms.
Freedom from Want, also known as The Thanksgiving Picture or I'll Be Home for Christmas, is the third of the Four Freedoms series of four oil paintings by American artist Norman Rockwell. The works were inspired by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union Address, known as Four Freedoms.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park is a four-acre (1.6 ha) memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt that celebrates the Four Freedoms he articulated in his 1941 State of the Union address. It is located in New York City at the southernmost point of Roosevelt Island, in the East River between Manhattan Island and Queens. It was originally designed by the architect Louis Kahn in 1974, but funds were only secured for groundbreaking in 2010 and completion in 2012.
The Problem We All Live With is a 1964 painting by Norman Rockwell that is considered an iconic image of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. It depicts Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old African-American girl, on her way to William Frantz Elementary School, an all-white public school, on November 14, 1960, during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis. Because of threats of violence against her, she is escorted by four deputy U.S. marshals; the painting is framed so that the marshals' heads are cropped at the shoulders, making Bridges the only person fully visible. On the wall behind her are written the racial slur "nigger" and the letters "KKK"; a smashed and splattered tomato thrown against the wall is also visible. The white protesters are not visible, as the viewer is looking at the scene from their point of view. The painting is oil on canvas and measures 36 inches (91 cm) high by 58 inches (150 cm) wide.
Sharon Brous is an American rabbi who is the senior rabbi of IKAR, a Jewish congregation in Los Angeles. She was one of the founders of IKAR in 2004, along with Melissa Balaban, who currently serves as IKAR's Chief Executive Officer, and others. Every year since its founding, IKAR has been named one of the nation’s 50 most innovative Jewish nonprofits by the Slingshot Fund Guide, a resource guide for Jewish innovation.
Freedom from fear is listed as a fundamental human right according to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948. On January 6, 1941, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it one of the "Four Freedoms" at his State of the Union, which was afterwards therefore referred to as the "Four Freedoms speech".
Growth of a Leader is a 1964 painting by Norman Rockwell. It appeared as the 1966 Brown & Bigelow Boy Scout Calendar. Long-time Rockwell model James Edgerton and his son are depicted as a Scout moving through the stages of a man's Scouting career.
For Freedoms is an artist-run platform for civic engagement, discourse, and direct action for artists in the United States. Co-founded by Hank Willis Thomas, Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo, and Wyatt Gallery in 2016, For Freedoms has partnered with US-based institutions and artists for activations including town halls, exhibitions and installations, public programs, billboard campaigns, and artist residencies. In June 2018, For Freedoms launched the 50 State Initiative, described as the "largest-ever public art project in the US".
Murder in Mississippi, as named by the artist, is a 1965 painting by Norman Rockwell which was commissioned for an article titled "Southern Justice" in the American magazine Look. The painting depicts the 1964 murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and was intended to illustrate an article written on the murders by civil rights attorney Charles Morgan Jr. The painting is oil on canvas 53 x 42 inches, and also has a pencil on board study of the same title, both of which reside in the collections of the Norman Rockwell Museum.
Marriage License is an oil painting by American illustrator Norman Rockwell created for the cover of the June 11, 1955, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. It depicts a young man and woman filling out a marriage license application at a government building in front of a bored-looking clerk. The man is dressed in a tan suit and has his arm around his partner, who is wearing a yellow dress and standing on tiptoe to sign her name. Although the room and its furnishings are dark, the couple are illuminated by the window beside them. The contrast between the couple and the clerk highlights two reoccurring themes in Rockwell's works: young love and ordinary life.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
