In the very difficult year of 1943, American artist Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) painted his scene of a family gathering around the dining table. It is a scene of bounty, but not extravagance. The family members are engaged with each other, more than with the food.
However, the title of the painting does not include any reference to Thanksgiving, nor was the image used in the holiday period. The painting appeared on the March 6, 1943 cover of the Saturday Evening Post. The image was part of a series of four paintings based on President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union Address and his “Four Freedoms.” The title of this painting is Freedom from Want. (The other FDR freedoms are Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, and Freedom from Fear.) These Rockwell paintings helped raise $132 million in the sale of War Bonds during World War II. Millions of copies of Rockwell’s works were distributed throughout the country, posted in schools, libraries, and post offices, helping to shape the American identity.
Some ignorant critics have dismissed Rockwell’s work as “kitsch,” but others have compared it to the classical art world’s most widely recognized meal, Leonardo Da Vinci’s mural, The Last Supper. Similar to the Last Supper, Rockwell’s central figures are framed in a window. In both paintings the viewer’s eye is drawn toward the center where the lines of perspective converge. We focus on the central figures, but all of the guests in both paintings are lost in animated conversation among themselves. Some critics have even pointed to the similarities in the creases in Rockwell’s humble tablecloth to those in the cloth covering Christ’s table in the Leonardo work. Rockwell used another Renaissance-era trick by including one solitary figure looking out at the viewer (the man in the lower right corner of Rockwell’s painting), to invite us into the scene. Rockwell was known for using his Arlington, Vermont neighbors as models, similar to Rembrandt’s use of his Jewish Quarter neighbors as models from Amsterdam.
