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The Peaceable Kingdoms of Edward Hicks
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18081 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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12 / 1999 |
2,568 Words |
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Stephen May
Stephen May is an independent scholar, writer, and lecturer on
art and culture based in Washington, D.C. |
The Peaceable Kingdom paintings by Edward Hicks, the nineteenth-century Quaker minister and artist, are probably the best-known and most beloved works in American folk art. But few understand what the pictures are all about and why their creation consumed so much of the painter's career. A fascinating exhibition now on national tour, and an excellent accompanying book by Carolyn Weekley, shed valuable light on these enduringly appealing canvases and the complex man behind them.
Curated by Weekley, director of museums at colonial Williamsburg, The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks assembles eighty objects--including thirty, or half, of the extant Peaceable Kingdom series--in the most comprehensive display of the minister/artist's work ever. The exhibit includes, in addition to paintings, original tools used by Hicks, signboards and furniture he decorated, documents relating to his life, and a portrait of the painter by his cousin Thomas Hicks. Many of the works come from the huge Hicks trove at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, the exhibition's first venue.
The show underscores how Hicks used his dual roles of Quaker minister and artist to teach moral and religious values based on the biblical prophecy of peaceful coexistence, found in the book of Isaiah. In his ministry and his art Hicks sought to promote the solution of problems, including a contentious division between his fellow Quakers, through peaceful means. His Peaceable Kingdom depictions reflect both the deep split between his coreligionists and his fluctuating reactions to it.
Born into a wealthy Anglican family in Bucks County,
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