Detail of Town Meeting by Norman Rockwell in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 2009

Artist: Norman Rockwell (American, 1894–1978)

Title: Town Meeting

Date: 1943

Medium: Oil on composition board

Dimensions: 21 1/4 x 17 1/4in. (54 x 43.8cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: George A. Hearn Fund, 1952

Accession Number: 52.164


Description:

In 1943 Rockwell painted four large pictures illustrating the "four essential human freedoms" outlined by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1941 address to Congress. The paintings-Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear-were reproduced as covers of the Saturday Evening Post. The Metropolitan's painting is one of several preliminary studies for Freedom of Speech based on Rockwell's favorable impressions of a town meeting he attended in his hometown, Arlington, Vermont.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/modern...