Edward Hicks
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Edward Hicks (April 4, 1780–August 23, 1849) was an American folk painter, devout Quaker (member of the Religious Society of Friends), and recognized minister in that sect.
Life and Work
Hicks was born in Langhorne, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His best-known paintings are probably the 62 extant versions of The Peaceable Kingdom, which 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; and 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 such as Edward Hicks and his cousin Elias Hicks.)
Hicks began his career as an apprentice to a coach builder, where he learned to paint ornaments on the carriages. 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. Eventually, 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 62 versions of this subject; the differences among them 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, he still refused to support political abolitionism or other Quakers who did so. Hicks was a member of the Newtown Monthly Meeting (Monthly Meetings are the local Quaker congregations) and is buried in the graveyard there. His home in Newtown, Pennsylvania, is adjacent to the Meeting's property and is a national historic landmark. His candid memoir, "Memoirs of the Life and Religious Labors of Carly," was published in 1851 after his death, but it dealt minimally with his art.
