The Peaceable Kingdom

Edward Hicks was a prominent Pennsylvania member of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, who believe in a direct, personal relationship with God. The Quaker values of equality, peace, and simplicity provided a striking contrast to the inequality, conflict, and excess that characterized the decades before and after the Civil War.

Hicks painted more than sixty versions of "The Peaceable Kingdom," a prophecy of the establishment of God's kingdom on earth, inspired by the biblical text Isaiah 11:6-9: "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." Hicks's depiction of the Quaker leader William Penn's 1682 purchase treaty with the Delaware/Lenape Indians, which ensured the future of the Pennsylvania colony, served as a historical model of a peaceable kingdom on earth.