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Artist or Maker: Edward Hicks (1780-1849), Circa 1835-1845

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Exhibited: Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, "Cincinnati Collects Paintings," March 31-May 15, 1983.
Cincinnati, Ohio, Cincinnati Art Museum, "The Fine Art of Folk Art," May 11-September 21, 1990.

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Notes: Property from the Collection of William and Bainie Earls

The sermons of Edward Hicks were characterized by strong words and a metaphorical vigor that was common to the preaching and writings of many Quaker ministers. Hicks ministry gained widespread notoriety as a result of his mastery of these techniques. The evolution of his easel works followed a similar path by developing his kingdom pictures where animals represent and act as counterparts for religious and moral beliefs. Joining the Kingdom pictures as one of the most recognizable and powerful genre of easel works for the artist are the images that depict William Penn's Treaty signing with the Lenni-Lenape tribes of the Delaware Indians. Concerned with the order and serenity that are the aim of a life guided by the Quaker tenets of simplicity, practical bearing and spiritual welfare, the life of William Penn would have stood testament to the ideals of spiritual and civil freedom that Hicks revered.

The image of Penn's treaty signing first appeared in the genre of Kingdom pictures with painted text borders known as the Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch. Hicks included a small cameo of the scene under the painted image of the Natural Bridge of Virginia as an icon of the peace achieved as a result of the historic signing. This diminutive inclusion in the scene was to achieve greater prominence in subsequent Kingdom pictures, and as the subject of easel works in their own right from the 1830's through the late 1840's.

Hicks' image was ultimately inspired by an original painting by Benjamin West, the American-born painter of historical, religious, and mythological subjects who had a profound influence on the development of historical painting in Britain and in the United States. Commissioned by William Penn's son to commemorate the historic event, West's painting gave monumentality and dignity to the events taking place on the American continent to a largely classic-minded British audience.

Throughout the years Hicks continued to rely on print sources as source material and starting points for his painted works, and the imagery of the Penn Treaty signing is one of the strongest examples of his reliance on this aspect of his sign painter's training to complete a work. While later copies of the West painting by other artists, American Edward Savage (1761-1817) for example, have been referenced as source material for Hicks' Treaty series, the reversed orientation of Hicks' painted image, and its compositional fidelity to West's composition are telltale indications that a print version of the painting was the primary source. Coupled with the knowledge that West's canvas didn't appear in the United States until 1878, and that Hicks' painted series reproduces certain inconsistencies peculiar to John Boydell's 1775 print of the painting, Boydell's image is widely considered Hicks' starting point.

The Penn's Treaty series are representative of a period of peace and greater artistic freedom and exploration for the artist. His life as a painter after the mid-1830's appears to have been characterized by a shop busy with decorative and easel painting and occupied with less of the extensive travel that distinguished his early ministry. During this period the Penn's Treaty images underwent a degree of personalization that draws similarity with the evolution of the Kingdom pictures. As Hicks gained greater confidence with this particular subject, he mastered the various details of the composition and expanded his chromatic palette. The images are rendered in a comfortable calligraphic style with feathered headdresses deftly drawn with unbroken, liquid brushstrokes, and solid forms that bespeak a return to his early lettering style as a sign painter. The rose and azure tones in the sky become animated, and the water is rendered with a stylized reflective quality. The original mahogany frame, typical of the style provided for him by his friend, the carpenter Edward Trego, is boldly lettered by Hicks and reads "PENN'S TREATY."

As a series of works that occupied Hicks along side his later Kingdom pictures, the Penn's Treaty signings exhibit a confidence and familiarity with both subject and technique. His comfort with his practiced subject, and with a painterly manner that summons both a self-styled fine art approach to rendering, mitered with the fresh, almost naove omnipresent influence of his background as a sign and decorative painter results in an image of unmistakable identity and vibrant vitality. It is an enduring and spirited American icon, just as is the artist who painted it.