Currently on View at the Art Institute of Chicago

Edward Hicks

Date: c. 1829-1830

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1993.7

Text Entries: (modified anniversary publication entry) Edward Hicks gained a reputation in his community for his work as an ornamental painter and his outspoken participation in the Society of Friends, popularly known as the Quakers. A lifelong resident of rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Hicks had a limited formal education. At the age of thirteen, he apprenticed to a coach painter. Later he married and set up shop painting signs, coaches, and other utilitarian objects. This profession was in conflict with the spare life advocated by his faith, and his increasing activity as a traveling minister kept him away from his business. Why or when Hicks turned to easel painting is unknown, but about 1820 he began to explore an allegorical subject that he found infinitely variable and satisfying. A Peaceable Kingdom with Quakers Bearing Banners portrays the tolerant coexistence among all the animals and humanity described in Isaiah 11: 6-9. Depicting wildness calmed by gentleness and worldliness tempered by innocence, the message of the Peaceable Kingdom became for Hicks a form of testament, a painted articulation of his deepest beliefs. A Peaceable Kingdom with Quakers Bearing Banners places Hicks at the center of a religious controversy that split the Quakers into factions. Hicks' elderly cousin Elias promoted an extreme form of Quaker quietism, in which the faithful were urged to discard all but the most basic elements of daily life to open themselves to divine grace and be guided by the Inward Light of Christ. Elias and his followers, known as Hicksites, withdrew from the Quaker Orthodoxy, prompting accusations of heresy. A series of one hundred Banner paintings by Hicks announce his solidarity with his cousin's beliefs, while calling for peaceful coexistence among the factions. Standing in the front row of the figures at the left and holding a handkerchief he used to mop his brow when preaching, Elias Hicks is accompanied by George Washington and William Penn. The Apostles stand behind them. The banners read "mind the LIGHT within IT IS GLAD TIDEING of Grate Joy PEACE ON EARTH GOOD WILL to ALL MEN everywhere," the words of the Apostle Luke and a basic tenet of the Quaker faith.