1780 -1849 · American folk art and Quaker spirituality

Reconciled animals, landscapes of Pennsylvania and Quaker ideals make Edward Hicks' Pacific Kingdom a major image of American folk art.

Edward Hicks was born in 1780 in Attleborough, Pennsylvania. Orphaned at a very young age, he was raised in a Quaker family then apprenticed to a car manufacturer, where he learned to paint signs, teams, furniture and decorations. He opened his own workshop and at the same time became a traveling minister of the Religious Society of Friends. This dual activity created lasting tension: decorative painting ensured his income, but Hicks was wary of the luxury and pride associated with the fine arts. He found a solution in images of moral significance. His motif of the Pacific Kingdom, taken up about sixty times, combines the prophecy of Isaiah - wild and domestic animals living in harmony - at the legendary meeting between William Penn and the Lenapes. Each version modifies the groups, faces and landscape according to his spiritual concerns and the divisions of the Quaker movement. Hicks also painted farms, landscapes, historical events and signs. He died in Newtown in 1849, leaving a work that had become central to the history of American folk art. The "Edward Hicks" selection notably compares The Peaceful Kingdom. His reading favors figures.

Hicks paints peace as a difficult discipline: the harmony of animals responds to the real conflicts of the world and its own community.