The 19th-century Quaker artist Edwards Hicks is arguably the most well-known and beloved of America’s folk painters. Born in Langhorne, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the orphan Hicks was apprenticed to local coach makers William and Henry Tomlinson from 1793 to 1800. By 1803 he had married Sarah Worstall of Newtown, Pennsylvania, and was received as a member of the Middletown Monthly Meeting. He became increasingly involved in his meeting’s affairs during these and the years immediately following, and by 1811 was recorded as a Quaker minister at Middletown because of his religious work and popularity as a gifted preacher. It was also during this year that he set up his shop in Newtown and commenced the ornamental painting business he would pursue for the remainder of his life.
Hicks was not trained as an easel artist, and had limited knowledge of studio techniques. As an ornamental painter, he was trained in various lettering styles, and knew how to paint heraldic devices and decorate signboards. The 62 versions of Peaceable Kingdom currently known are the most famous of Hicks’ easel works. These appealing pictures, showing groups of gentle domestic animals existing peacefully with fierce carnivorous beasts such as bears, lions, wolves and leopards, have been widely studied and written about. Associated with them, because of their relationship to the artist’s religious life and beliefs, are a handful of other subjects, including depictions of William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians, which he painted in the 1830s and 1840s. This newly-discovered example (Penn’s Treaty With the Indians) brings the known number of these depictions to 14. It is the largest known Treaty picture by Hicks, as well as one of the most impressive, in terms of its drawing, coloration and overall execution. The large size of this Treaty may seem curious to some, but it is consistent with Hicks’ approach to other subjects. There are, for instance, Kingdom paintings ranging in size from approximately 18 by 23 inches to 30 by 35 inches, and farm scenes that are rather small at 22 by 26 inches, and very large at 40 by nearly 50 inches. Some of the larger works were commissioned by family and close friends, or for use in specific locations. This may have been the case with this particular Treaty, although its early history and ownership remain unknown.
Hicks included a small vignette of William Penn signing a treaty with the Indians in nearly all of his Peaceable Kingdom paintings, as an interesting parallel to the gathered animals derived from the Biblical prophesy in the Book of Isaiah: “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; and the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” He also produced at least two signboards featuring the same subject, only one of which survives today, in the collection of the Newtown Historic Association, Newtown, Pennsylvania.
Source: Sotheby’s New York