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The Residence of David Twining, 1845-47. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center.
Hicks (1780-1849)
Philadelphia's curator of American painting Darrel Sewell notes, "Hicks was a man with a vision, who really did associate himself with his art. His work is based on his deep feelings about what was going on in the world around him."
Orphaned at a very early age, Edward Hickswas taken in by a family that raised him in the Quaker tradition. He was apprenticed to a coach maker and showed an early aptitude for painting, which led to employment as a painter of decorations on coaches and of street, shop, and tavern signs.
Upon being accepted as a Quaker preacher - contemporary accounts note his extraordinary gifts in this regard - he felt compelled to give up these lucrative and worldly pursuits. He tried farming, but his debts mounted, his health declined, and he still had a family to support.
Hicks resolved this dilemma by returning to painting, but focused solely on subject matter of a religious nature. Hick's 1825 painting of "The Falls of Niagara" shows the cataract from the Canadian side, along with the moose, beaver, rattlesnake, and eagle that have traditionally been used as emblems of North America.
Inscribed around the border is an excerpt from Alexander Wilson's poem, "The Foresters." The painting, a sort of visual sermon, can be interpreted as a commemoration of Hicks's missionary work among Native American tribes in upstate New York.
(The above information is from a Niagara NY web site, as is the image.)
An interesting note on this painting is that Edward Hicks painted the Falls in 1825 but based
his work on an engraving from an inset on a map of North America published in 1822.
The Peaceable Kingdom
c. 1847
Oil on canvas
Go HERE to see a large image of another Peaceable Kingdom.
You will love the detail!
Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch, c. 1826-30
Reynolda House, Museum of American Art
Winston-Salem, NCSee the Natural Bridge of Virginia in the background?
Go HERE to see a very large image, about 4 times your monitor, of another Peaceable Kingdom with painted frame inscription. Fascinating details are worth the wait...go get a drink of water, pet the dog, stretch.
ArtsEdNet has a lesson involving the above painting.
"The purpose of this lesson will be to make students aware of how Western culture, among others, has used an established symbol system to convey meaning through art."
Why did Hicks paint Peaceable Kingdoms?
You have read why he painted scenes based on his religious beliefs. But why this particular theme, over and over? The theme is peace among all living beings....where even predators and prey like the lion and the lamb can lie next to each other.
The reason seems to be that Hicks was greatly upset over arguments and disagreements within his church. It appeared as if the Quakers would divide into two groups. This upset Edward Hicks ,who was a devout preacher, a great deal and he began to paint the theme of peace. Even after the the problems were solved he continued painting Peaceable Kingdoms for the next 30 years!
The Cornell Farm
From the National Art GalleryArt students:
What perspective tricks did Hicks use in this painting?
All the "biggies" that you learn starting in third grade are here! If you are in 5th grade you may have learned them all by now...can you remember?
Check the bottom of the page for the answers.
For those of you who want to know more .....an interesting review of a show of Hicks' work at Williamsburg, Virginia, and the full text of the article accompanying the Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch from the Reynolda House, Museum of American Art
Winston-Salem, NC.The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks
By Karla Klein Albertson
WILLIAMSBURG, VA. - "The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks," which opened in early February at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center of Colonial Williamsburg, opens new windows on the life of the well-known Bucks County, Penn. painter and Quaker minister.
Collectors, who only know Hicks' work from the visionary "Peaceable Kingdom" paintings, will find a more complete picture of the artist's range from the trade signs he painted for a living to his tranquil renditions of farm life in the early Nineteenth Century.
Without a doubt, the famous Kingdoms remain at the heart of the show, curated by Carolyn J. Weekley, director of museums for Colonial Williamsburg. Between the 1820s and his death in 1849, Hicks painted 62 versions of this scene with animals and a small child based on Isaiah's biblical prophecy (11:6-9) of harmony among the gentle and fierce creatures of the earth.
Weekley's interest, which led to her research for this exhibition and its accompanying catalogue, began in her college days. "I never quite got over seeing one of his Kingdoms, painted in the 1830s, in which two particular animals Ï the lion and the leopard Ï have these very intense, almost electrifying gazes. It seemed anathema to what the picture was all about, which was peace. I always felt there was something more going on in these paintings than just a simple moralistic teaching of `thou shalt not harm.'"
Hicks earliest versions from the 1820s are often framed by the actual biblical text, "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, & the leopard shall lie down with the kid, & the young lion & the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." Surrounded by this roster of animals, the determined child in question guides the lion with a firm grasp on his mane. Most renditions include a vignette depicting William Penn's Treaty with the Lenape Indians in the background. An expanded version of the treaty subject, which also represented mankind's ability to live in harmony, was the main subject of several paintings by Hicks. Examples are in the collections of AARFAC, the Shelburne and the Mercer Museum.
Weekley continued, "His paintings are enormously appealing. They're powerful little pictures. When you stand in front of these things, a lot of people have the same reaction that I did. You sense something about these paintings that is mysterious. You don't quite get it, but you know there's something more there that intrigues you. They're colorful and detailed, so you don't stand ten feet away to view them. You need to study them up close."
When she began to organize the show, which took many years to bring together, Weekley realized, "The Kingdom paintings are the core of the exhibition. What we were really trying to achieve with the show was to bring greater understanding to why he did these paintings. These are at the center of his artistic life, and this vision is where his creativity comes from. After all, he spent three decades of thinking about and working on these paintings. He painted the first about 1816-1818 and was working on one last one the night before he died. That one is in the show. He was definitely compelled. He said he had an excessive fondness for painting, and you sense that when you look at his work."
After reading an article by David Tatham, "Edward Hicks, Elias Hicks, and John Comly: Perspectives on the Peaceable Kingdom Theme" in American Art Journal, XIII (1981), Weekley became convinced that the changes in the depictions of the Kingdom series stemmed from Hicks distress over Quaker sectarian strife. The painter was the cousin of Elias Hicks, who led the "Hicksite" contingent of Quakers, which found itself in disagreement with more orthodox members of the community.
Her views are expressed at length in the middle chapters of the exhibition's accompanying volume, The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks. Written by Weekley with the assistance of Laura Pass Barry as a joint AARFAC/Abrams publication, the book is available for $39.95 from the Folk Art Center gift shop at 757/220-7693 or through local bookstores.
Weekley points out, "I think he was very involved and upset by what was going on in the Society of Friends. He really bonded with Elias Hicks, and at one point, says he was like a father. Edward Hicks' personal disappointment and anger are very obvious in these paintings. Toward the end of his life, the animals become dispersed, not organized together as they used to be. Finally, they fall to the bottom of the canvas, all facing different directions with no unity, just as there was no reunification in the church during his lifetime."
Weekley declines to label Hicks a "folk" painter, noting a passage by contemporary John Comly, who felt he had "a genius, and taste for imitation, which if the Divine law had not prohibited, might have rivaled Peale or West....". This refers to the Quaker feeling that portrait commissions of the type accepted by Charles Willson Peale and Benjamin West were an indulgence of human vanity.
Peale, however, did paint Quaker portraits, and a dichotomy developed between the worldly, wealthy Friends of the city, who were more flexible in their attitude toward art, and the more modest Quakers who lived in outlying areas. Weekley writes, "The Society of Friends in Edward's time considered ornamental painting a suitable trade for members so long as it was done within the Society's general aesthetic guidelines."
Although 30 of the show's 80 exhibits are various versions of the Peaceable Kingdom, visitors may be more intrigued by less familiar subject matter, in particular the farm scapes which capture the rural tranquillity of Quaker agrarian life. An excellent example is "The Residence of David Twining," a scene Hicks painted at least four times between 1845 and 1847, near the end of his life.
When young, Edward Hicks lived at the prosperous Bucks Country farm of David and Elizabeth Twining, and sixty years later in his life painted the home and fields as they appeared in 1785 based on his memories. The sale at Christie's on January 15 of a "Peaceable Kingdom" for $4,732,500 has overshadowed the fact that, minutes earlier, a version of "The Residence of David Twining," where Hicks once lived, had reached a remarkable $1,432,500.
One Twining farm painting was executed for David Leedom, whose parents Jesse and Mary Twining Leedom appear in the work. Hicks also painted Leedom Farm for David in 1849, a few month before his death at age 70. The view's vast luminous sky and orderly arrangement of livestock in the foreground seem to recapture the vision of harmonious life so important to Hicks and other Quakers.
The Hicks exhibition is the focus of several Williamsburg special events scheduled this spring, including the Williamsburg Institute on "Folk Art Favorites" on March 11-14 and a series of lectures each Wednesday at 3:30 pm during May at the Hennage Auditorium of Williamsburg's De Witt Wallace Gallery. The first, on May 5, will feature Carolyn Weekley exploring the message behind "The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks." (Institute information: 800/603-0948; lecture information: 757/220-7724.)
After closing at Williamsburg in September, "The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks" goes on an extended tour of the country, opening at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on October 10, then on to Denver and San Francisco. Philadelphia's curator of American painting Darrel Sewell notes, "Hicks was a man with a vision, who really did associate himself with his art. His work is based on his deep feelings about what was going on in the world around him." Viewers around the country will be able to share Hick's accurate interpretations of local Quaker life as well as his hopeful visions of a better world in the new millennium.
Edward Hicks (1780-1849)
"Oh, that I could talk less and pray more, I should be better prepared to live, and better prepared to die."
Source - Faith and Practice, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, 1972
Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch, c. 1826
In the 1820s, soon after becoming deeply embroiled in the Quaker Separatist movement led by his cousin Elias, Edward Hicks, a Quaker preacher from Newtown, Pennsylvania, began to make oil paintings of the peaceable kingdom based upon the description found in Isaiah 11:6. This painting is one of four extant versions of Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch that includes the Natural Bridge (Virginia's famous landmark) and belongs to Hicks's earliest period. The conviction with which Hicks portrayed his longing for peace in his paintings of this period stands in ironic contrast to the fact that he and Elias led the dispute that so severely disrupted Quaker harmony.
Although the Hicksites put an end to the controversy in 1827 when they withdrew from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Hicks continued to paint variations of the biblical vision of peace for the following thirty years.
In this engaging example Hicks depicts the domestic animals named in the scriptural verse--a lamb, a goat, and a calf--reposing contentedly with their natural predators. The child leads them with an arm resting casually on the lion's mane. This scene of everlasting peace is set against a backdrop composed of hollow stumps and ravaged trees--Romantic imagery that was just beginning to enter mainstream American painting in the 1820s. Its use at this time is ironic in that it seems to rank a back-country painter as a forerunner of the American Romantic movement, but the appropriation of nature symbolism in this painting seems only to reflect the immediate anguish caused by the Quaker Schism. In the background the Natural Bridge and beneath it the tiny figures engaged in the signing of William Penn's treaty offer models for unification used by both nature and man.
Earning his living as a decorative painter, Hicks was accustomed to the practice of copying ready-made motifs onto the wagons, chairs, milk buckets, floor cloths, and signboards he decorated. He followed the same procedure in his oil paintings, choosing images he found in the Bible, maps, and penny booklets that he combined into compositions that expressed his peaceful aspirations. Although Hicks's pictorial vocabulary was limited by this practice, he nonetheless achieved an authoritative and innovative syntheses of biblical, natural, and historical emblems whose originality and complexity surpass these usual ambitions of folk artists.
Hick's curious selection of the Natural Bridge as a counterpart to the biblical vision of the peaceable kingdom is best explained by descriptions in current travel accounts. In 1798 Isaac Weld attempted to account for this geological curiosity. "Two sides of the chasm were once united, but by what great agent they were separated, whether fire or water, remains hidden."The Natural Bridge thus served as the appropriate symbol for the once united, not separated Quakers. Hicks's inclusion of the signing of William Penn's treaty functions similarly as a testament to Man's fulfillment of the peaceful kingdom on earth.
The word branch in the title refers to the biblical passage in Isaiah 11:1, which announces the Messiah's descent as a "branch" from the royal line of David, son of Jesse. The grapevine and branch held by the child represents the sacrificial blood of Christ--a curious choice for a leading spokesman for the inner light rather than outward sacrament as the true means of salvation. The single branch loaded with autumn leaves and growing out of the hollow stump also seems to provide a visual counterpart to the title, as though the new growth on old wood represented the prevalence of the Hicksites over the Orthodox Quakers.
Hicks produced over sixty versions of the peaceable kingdom between 1820 and 1849. Today he is celebrated as this country's foremost representative of nineteenth-century folk painting.
OK...in third grade we started to really pay attention to a couple tricks that make a drawing or painting look like it has depth.
One trick is overlapping. The beautiful cows and horses are painted so some appear to be behind others....they overlap.
Another trick in third grade is to draw things that are farther away smaller! Find people in the painting. See how the ones far away are tiny? What else about the people makes them look far away?....
Look at the people again. Where on the painting are they?
Things farther away are HIGHER UP in the picture.In fourth grade we learned that far away hills often look faded out because of the way coloris effected by the light bouncing around in the air on dust and mist and stuff. This atmospheric perspective trick is clearly used by Hicks!
And in fifth grade we begin to explore more calculated perspective tricks like linear, also called one-point, perspective. Look at those trees all lined up neat as can be. Looks like they are all the same age...and if we measured them in real life they would all be 40 feet tall maybe.
Artists can use guide lines (lines/linear) in a certain way to figure out exactly how much smaller to make the trees farther away to give that illusion. Find more things in the painting Hicks used linear perspective to draw.
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