Peaceable Kingdom
c.1835
Artist: Edward Hicks (1780-1849)
Category: biblical painting
Medium: oil on canvas
Collection of the New York State Historical Association.

Description: This is a scene of the peaceable kingdom with a printed border, a rhyming couplet on each of the four sides of the painting and a small square scene of a lamb and a bird in each of the four corners. Present is a robed child with his left arm around a lion and right hand holding a grapevine. There are six animals in the lower right, including a lion, tiger, lamb, cow and others. There is a vignette of Penn's treaty with the indians in the center-left background, under a tree on the waterbank. Two vessels, a three masted ship and a rowboat, appear in the distance . A cleft tree trunk juts into the center of the painting above the child's head. The reverse of the painting bears an inscription that dedicates it to the artist's adopted sister and her daughters.

References:

Ford, Alice. Edward Hicks: Painter Of The Peaceable Kingdom. 1952.

Lipman, Jean And Armstrong, Tom. American Folk Painters Of Three Centuries. New York: Hudson Hill Press, Inc. And Whitney Museum Of American Art, 1980.

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