Never Broken Installation Shot - The Power of a Painting

Upper right:
Thomas Hicks (1823–1890), "Portrait of Edward Hicks," ca. 1850–1852. Oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 29 1/8 inches. James A. Michener Art Museum. Museum purchase funded by Eleanor K. Denoon, The Bella S. and Benjamin H. Garb Foundation Inc., Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Gemmill, George S. Hobensack, Jr., Laurence D. Keller, William Mandel, Members of Newtown Friends Meeting, Olde Hope Antiques, Inc., Residents of Pennswood Village, Eleanor and Malcolm Polis, Ms. Leslie E. Skilton, Kingdon Swayne and Anonymous Donors

Upper left:
Edward Hicks (1780–1849), "Penn’s Treaty," ca. 1830–1835. Oil on canvas, 17 ½ x 23 ½ inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art: 125th Anniversary Acquisition. Gift of the McNeil Americana Collection, 2007, 2007-65-7

Lower right:
Edward Hicks (1780–1849), "Peaceable Kingdom," 1835–1837. Oil on canvas, 28 x 35 inches. Courtesy of the Mercer Museum of the Bucks County Historical Society

Lower left:
Edward Hicks (1780–1849), "Penn’s Treaty with the Indians," ca. 1840. Oil on canvas, 38 x 48 inches. James A. Michener Art Museum. Gift of Anthony Seraphin in honor of Robert and Joyce Byers

Perhaps no one copied "Penn’s Treaty" more often than the Bucks County painter Edward Hicks (1780–1849). Hicks was a devout Quaker minister and sign painter, and his easel paintings expressed his religious and personal viewpoints. He believed William Penn exemplified spiritual freedom as the foundation of civil liberty, and he produced about fifteen paintings of "Penn’s Treaty." Hicks also incorporated the scene into many of his iconic "Peaceable Kingdom" works, which illustrate a passage from the Old Testament book of Isaiah that envisioned a future where domestic animals, carnivorous beasts, and people lived together peacefully. A "Peaceable Kingdom" appears in the background of the portrait of the artist by his cousin. Through these paintings, Hicks envisioned a harmonious coexistence of the Lenape and European colonists at a moment when the Lenape had been violently forced out of Pennsylvania.