edward hicks

Edward Hicks (April 4, 1780 – August 23, 1849) was an American folk and naïve (primitive) artist and devout Quaker (member of the Religious Society of Friends).

Life and work

Hicks was born in Langhorne, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Probably his best-known works are the various versions of the painting Peaceable Kingdom. These paintings depict the verses from Book of Isaiah, chapter 11, that begin "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. . . ." Many of these paintings also depict, in the background, the legendary treaty between William Penn and the Lenape at the foundation of Pennsylvania.

Hicks's mother died when he was an infant, and the family who raised him were Quakers. Hicks embraced the religion himself and became a traveling minister (Quakers do not have paid clergy, but they do recognize particular people as gifted in ministry—people like Edward Hicks and his cousin Elias Hicks).

Hicks began his career as an apprentice to a coach-builder. He learned to paint decorations on the coaches. Later he started his own business, decorating furniture and other objects.

Hicks's Quaker faith sometimes conflicted with his career as an artist. In fact he was criticized for engaging in "worldly activity." For a time, he gave up painting. Then he found a way of combining his faith and his work by producing paintings that depicted various aspects of Quaker belief. The Peaceable Kingdom, for example, reflects the Friends' Peace Testimony. He painted at least 60 versions of this subject; the differences among them tended to reflect the dramatic events that transpired within the Society of Friends in the late 1820s and their consequences.

Hicks's other subjects were historical events that occurred in Pennsylvania, farm life, and Bible stories.

An opponent of slavery who refused to support political abolitionism, Hicks was a member of Newtown Monthly Meeting (monthly meetings are the local Quaker congregations), and is buried in the graveyard there. His home in Newtown, PA is adjacent to the meeting's property, and is a national historic landmark.

Gallery of major works

Selected works and where to view them

• The Peaceable Kingdom, ca. 1833, Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts
• The Falls of Niagara, ca. 1825, and The Peaceable Kingdom, ca. 1830-1832, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
• Penn's Treaty With the Indians, ca. 1830-1840, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas
• Noah's Ark, 1846 and The Peaceable Kingdom, ca. 1844-1846, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
• Grave of William Penn, 1847, Newark Art Museum in Newark, New Jersey
• The Cornell Farm, 1848; The Grave of William Penn, ca. 1847-1848; The Landing of Columbus, ca. 1837; The Peaceable Kingdom, ca. 1834; Penn's Treaty With the Indians, ca. 1840-1844; and Portrait of a Child, ca. 1840, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C.