Norman Rockwell

Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Helen E. Bell, New York (sold: Sotheby's, New York, April 21, 1978, lot 210)
Hammer Galleries, New York (acquired at the above sale)
Tableau Fine Art, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1996

Thomas S. Buechner, Norman Rockwell Artist, and Illustrator, New York, 1970, pp. 385-386, n.p.
Laurie Norton Moffatt, Norman Rockwell: A Definitive Catalogue, vol. II, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 1986, no. S566a, p. 770

Norman Rockwell executed the present work as a preparatory study for Freedom of Worship, one of the four paintings that comprise his iconic Four Freedoms series. Inspired by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address, in which he outlined four essential human rights, Rockwell sought to capture the ideas of freedom from want, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, and freedom from fear through everyday moments of ordinary Americans. The paintings were published in The Saturday Evening Post over four consecutive weeks in 1943. The second in the series, Freedom of Worship, was published on February 27, 1943, alongside an essay by the philosopher Will Durant.