The nature of Edward Hicks's painting - Cover Story

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 1999 by Scott W. Nolley, Carolyn J. Weekley

A traveling exhibition entitled The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks will be on view at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Virginia, from February 7 until September 6. Future showings will be listed in Calendar. This is the first major exhibition devoted to Hicks. It is accompanied by a book about the artist's life and career written by Carolyn J. Weekley, which bears the same title as the exhibition. The book and exhibition were made possible by the support of the Grainger Foundation in Winnetka, Illinois, Juli and David Grainger, the Henry Luce Foundation in New York City, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Miami. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation gratefully acknowledges their support.

1 Memoirs of the Life and Religious Labors of Edward Hicks, Late of Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Written by Himself (Philadelphia, 1851), p. 13.

2 See Alice Ford, Edward Hicks: Painter of the Peaceable Kingdom (1952; University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1998); Alice Ford, Edward Hicks: His Life and Art (Abbeville Press, New York, 1985); and Eleanore Price Mather and Dorothy Canning Miller, Edward Hicks: His Peaceable Kingdoms and Other Paintings (University of Delaware Press, Newark, 1983).

3 Hicks to John Dickinson, November 2, 1779, as cited in Ford, Edward Hicks: Painter of the Peaceable Kingdom, p. 9.

4 Memoirs, pp. 25-26.

5 Ibid., p. 12.

6 Mather and Miller, Edward Hicks, p. 51.

7 This information was provided by Mather to Barbara R. Luck on February 4, 1981, who, in turn, summarized what transpired for the archives of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, Virginia.

8 Letter of June 15, 1817 (Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania).

SCOTT W. NOLLEY is an associate conservator at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg Virginia.

CAROLYN J. WEEKLEY is the director of museums at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.