In Four Freedoms (Rockwell), how is the Aftermath discussed?
When the series was published, The Saturday Evening Post received millions of reprint requests. They produced 25,000 sets, including both the essays and full-color reproductions of the paintings, sold at cost for $0.25 (equivalent to $4.23 in 2022). According to Rockwell, the OWI got involved and produced 2.5 million sets of Four Freedoms posters only after the public demanded reprints. By the end of the war, four million posters had been printed. Both the Freedom from Fear and Freedom from Want posters had the leading caption "ours … to fight for" and the Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship had the leading caption "Buy War Bonds" and the word "Save" before the respective freedom. A 1946 lithograph version of the 1943 paintings exists showing all four paintings under the heading "ours … to fight for".The Four Freedoms were issued as posters by the United States Government Printing Office and as postage stamps by the United States Postal Service. They were used as commemorative covers for war bonds and postage stamps offered during the War Bond show. The stamps are not to be confused with the February 12, 1943 one-cent Four Freedoms Postage Stamp Issue by another artist. The Rockwell versions were issued in a set of four fifty-cent stamps in 1994, the 100th anniversary of Rockwell's birth. Freedom from Want was included as the cover image of the 1946 book Norman Rockwell, Illustrator that was written when Rockwell was "at the height of his fame as America's most popular illustrator". By 1972, this 1946 publication was in its seventh printing. Although the paintings were originally intimately connected to Roosevelt and the American cause in World War II, the paintings have now developed an independent iconic identity in textbooks and on ties as well as in the cultural and social fabric. By the end of the 20th century, 25 million people bought Rockwell's Four Freedoms prints.
Over time, the series became widely distributed in a poster form and became instrumental in the U. S. Government War Bond Drive. War Bonds are “debt securities issued by a government to finance military operations and other expenditure in times of war.”Rockwell noted that the series took an emotional toll on him, saying the works were "serious paintings which sucked the energy right out of me like dredges, leaving me dazed and thoroughly weary". His subsequent assignment was to produce the 1943 April Fools' Day cover for The Post, which was much more relaxing.Rockwell was solicited for a variety of works following the publication of the Four Freedoms. Massachusetts Representative Edith Nourse Rogers put forth a congressional resolution to declare a fifth freedom: "Freedom of Private Enterprise". Bronx Inter-Racial Conference chairman Roderick Stephens, requested Rockwell's services to highlight the need for improved interracial relations in a series that would complement the original Four Freedoms. Rockwell and Stephens communicated, and, over the course of his career, Rockwell did contemplate and depict race relations in several works, but not as a series.
United States Government Printing Office Edith Nourse Rogers Norman Rockwell textbook United States Postal Service Roderick Stephens Four Freedoms lithograph Freedom from Want The Saturday Evening Post ties illustrator covers Freedom from Fear April Fools' Day Illustrator postage stamp Freedom of Worship Freedom of Speech reprint war bond