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拍品专文
..In the character of Edward Hicks were conspicuously combined, the gentleman and the christian - he possessed a noble soul and republican spirit, well seasoned with grace, by which as a RIGHTEOUS man, he was "bold as a lion," yet meek and gentle as a lamb Being by trade a painter, he... took much delight in painting the "Peaceable Kingdom," (the design take from the prophecy of Isaiah,) also" Penn's Treaty with the Indians..."
M.S.L. (i)
One of the most important American self-taught artists, Edward Hicks (1780-1849) created a vision and hope for his native country expressed in the harmony of his paintings. Like his more famous and prolifically produced renderings of the Peaceable Kingdom, Penn's Treaty with the Indians is a secular realization of the same goal. Unlike the image based on the prophecy of Isaiah, Penn's Treaty with the Indians was based on an historical event. This reality made the image not only an example for viewers of the painting to learn from and aspire to, but an attainable goal as well: a peace among adversaries had happened, not in Scripture, but in Pennsylvania.
The image and ideal of Penn's Treaty with the Indians is among the most transcendent and enduring in American folklore. In the pantheon of American folk history, it occupies a vitality and importance equal to the first Puritan Thanksgiving with the Indians, the story of Pocahontas, and the saga of Sacagawea leading Lewis and Clark through the wilderness. Penn's Treaty with the Indians was literally carved into our national heritage with Nicholas Gevelot's relief-carved panel for the Capitol Rotunda in 1824. Yet despite the allure of these romanticized histories of America's original population, the reality of European colonial relations with Native Americans was not as heroic. Penn's great experiment in the New World was more complex than its oral history allows, and the relationship of the Quakers with European settlers and Native Americans was at times more conflicted than the image of plain pacifists presents.
Mary S. Lippincott, the original owner of the painting illustrated here, was a Quaker schoolteacher from Moorestown, New Jersey, and the probable author of the recollection of Edward Hicks printed above. An important minister in her (Hicksite) Monthly and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Mary S. Lippincott was also a friend of Edward Hicks. Her personal and family history sheds important light on the network of Quaker family and community relations between Burlington County, New Jersey, where she lived, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where Hicks and her Lippincott relatives lived immediately across the Delaware River, only 30 miles away.
PENN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS: AN AMERICAN FOLK LEGEND
While Hicks' image of Penn's Treaty with the Indians is among the most famous renditions of that scene, it was not the first. Commissioned by Williams Penn's son to immortalize the agreement, Benjamin West (1738-1820) painted this first and in even in its time, most famous Penn's Treaty with the Indians in 1771-72 (see Illustration 1). The canvas shows Penn as a middle-aged man, not the thirty-seven year old he was at the time of the treaty in 1682, and in costume more appropriate to West's era than the late 17th century. (ii) This painting is important not only as the prototype for later artists, but also as a political statement by West. As a Pennsylvanian and Quaker living in London on the eve of the American Revolution, the heroic nature and magnitude of West's canvas (75x107in.) strongly implied that events in America were as important and worthy of history painting as any classical subject. In 1775, John Boydell published a widely distributed print engraved by John Hall of the West painting in London, which reproduced the original, but flipped the scene to its mirror opposite (see Lot 1 and Illustration 2). Inspired by West, fellow American Edward Savage (1761-1817) also painted a version of Penn's Treaty in 1800 which has been cited as the source for Hicks in the Penn's Treaty series and other subjects. It is more likely that the print after West was Hicks' source. It is certain that Hicks never saw the original painting by West as the canvas did not come to America until 1878 when it was given to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Hicks was known to have worked from print sources for his paintings, such as the wild animals of his Peaceable Kingdoms and the figure of Jesse Leedom in his Twining Farm.(iii) The Boydell print would have been readily accessible to Hicks, and his replication of certain inconcsistencies in the print indicate Hicks' knowledge of it. The features of the West painting reproduced by Boydell and Hicks include a series of distinct pine trees rising above and receding to the background of an otherwise muted and indistinct background. The features of the West painting which are not clearly represented in the Boydell print include what are in the original two weeping trees by the water of the background, and the feather headdress held by one of the Indians next to Penn. These two trees appear broken and falling over in the Boydell print. Hicks reproduced only one of the trees at an unnatural and gale force angle in the versions owned by The Bucks County Historical Society (see Illustration 8) and another illustrated and discussed in Mather and Miller.(iv) Other versions presumably painted later do not include what Hicks must have considered an unsuccessful element. Likewise, Hicks has completed the metamorphosis of the headdress held by an Indian adjacent to Penn which in the Boydell print has begun to assume the attributes of a large fan.
Characteristic of Hicks' work, the painting offered here is comprised of distinct but related groups of activity. Like the Peaceable Kingdom series, the central activity appears to transpire at the edge of a great chasm. The principle group of the painting is William Penn, with his arms opened in embracing friendship, and his immediate coterie of Friends. Adjacent in conversation and standing within the picture, though lacking a commensurately clear leader, is the group of Delaware Indians to whom Penn directs his offerings of peace, friendship and bounty. Below this, in a synopsis of the larger action, are two Quakers offering bolts of costly textiles to two Indians. In the background are a Quaker and an Indian shaking hands. In the left foreground is an elaborately dressed Squaw nursing her child, and on the right are two men awaiting their opportunity to make further offerings to the Indians. These satellite clusters serve to underscore and reinforce the central activity and theme of the painting: harmonious and nurturing companionship between strangers or presumed enemies. The entire meeting takes place under the branches of the Treaty Elm at Shackamaxon. As such, the tree becomes a metaphor for the spiritual nature of the event. As a creation of the Divinity and placed on this earth by Him, the Elm at Shackamaxon is both witness and representative of the sanctioning and protective canopy of the Creator over the Treaty and its participants.
In addition to the Wm. Penn's Treaty offered here, Edward Hicks painted at least thirteen other known oil on canvas versions of the subject, as well as two painted signboards. Six canvases are in museum collections and include the National Gallery of Art (see Illustration 3), the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center at Colonial Williamsburg (see Illustration 5), The Thomas Gilcrease Museum of American Art (see Illustration 6), The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (see Illustration 7), The Mercer Museum of the Bucks County Historical Society (see illustration 8), and the Shelburne Museum.(v) Six canvases are in private collections (for one, see Illustration 4).(vi) The two painted signboard versions of Penn's Treaty with the Indians are in the collections of the Newtown Historic Association and Widener College.(vii) The range of characters, inscriptions, activities and architecture vary widely within the oil on canvas group.
Five paintings in the group, including the version offered here, include inscribed and dated rectangular blocks at the base of the painting. The remaining four in this group are in the collections of the National Gallery (Illustration 3), Shelburne Museum, and two are in private collections (one, Illustration 4). Of these five, the Lippincott version has the fewest words. This verbal simplicity provides a visual link between the inscribed canvas group and the three canvases whose original frames are lettered PENN'S TREATY at the base. The mahogany corners blocks of the frames of these canvases also occupy a similar visual space to the date blocks and unpainted reserves of the inscribed group (see Illustrations 5, 6 and 8).
In addition to differing arrangements of scene and text, the quantity and placement of Indians attending the treaty also changes. Hicks varied the number of Indians to between ten and fourteen attending the event. The original West canvas included nineteen Indians, the Boydell print appears to have twenty; the Lippincott picture is among the four canvases with the highest number of Indians and includes fourteen. Only four canvase, in addition to the Lippincott Treaty, include the Squaw nursing her baby at the lower left of the canvas.
The presentation of Hicks' symbol of sumptuous, costly offerings, the bolts of textiles, also varies within the group. While all feature the central unfurled rolls of clothe, the canvases at Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, the Gilcrease and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as well as two in private collections, omit the two waiting sailors of the original West scene and replace them with open trunks of brightly colored rolled fabrics (see Illustrations 5-7). The National Gallery, Bucks County Historical Society, Shelburne, Lippincott and two private collection Treaties show a greater fidelity to the West canvas by retaining the two sailors in their original positions (see Illustrations 3, 4, and 8). A canvas in a private collection links the two groups in its omission of the two sailors and the additional bolts of fabric.(viii)
Hicks attempts the most faithful replication of West's painting only in the canvas at the Mercer Museum of the Bucks County Historical Society by including the gabled, dormered and arched entry stone building immediately to the left behind Penn (see Illustration 8). All other versions show either a hidden central structure to the background or a much more simple, vernacular clapboard edifice whose orientation to the scene changes.
The most consistent feature of all the canvases is the presence of the anchored ship and dinghy with arriving Quakers in the distance. While this far landscape changes in terms of the specific activities of its participants, the consistent theme is that the arriving Quakers and the Indians are almost always involved in some form of greeting or friendly communication. The Lippincott, National Gallery and Gilcrease Museum canvases all include Quakers and Indians shaking hands or conversing closely (see Illustrations 3 and 6).
The date most recently assigned to the earliest Penn's Treaty painting is 1830.(ix) The Penn's Treaty with the Indians in the collection of the Bucks County Historical Society represents the most faithful reproduction of all the elements of the West original, and so must be considered among, if not the earliest version of the scene done by Hicks (see Illustration 8). If the manner in which The Bucks County Historical Society's painting has been organized and framed is any indication, then its comparables at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center and Gilcrease Museum fall into this earlier category as well (see Illustrations 5 and 6). The canvas in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston takes the most licenses with the original in its inclusion of tents at the background left. Whether this difference indicates that Hicks was trying new motifs for the scene which he rejected in later works, or whether this version shows the furthest evolution from the original is unknown. Given the variety of elements seen in all the canvases, many of which are included in the Lippincott painting, it can be considered that the version offered here is among the middle to later of the group, and probably painted after 1840. Events in the life of its original owner may shed some light to this end. In 1842, Mary S. Lippincott and her husband, Isaac, established a Friends boarding school for girls in Moorestown, New Jersey. It is possible, although entirely conjectural, that such an important mission as the education of young minds may have inspired an instructional gift in the form of a painting whose lessons teach history and the tenets of Quakerism.
PENN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS: THE HISTORIC REALITY
My Friends,
There is a great God and power that hath made the world, and all things therein, to whom you and I, and all people owe their being and well-being, and to whom you and I must one day give an account for all that we do in the world. This great God hath written his law in our hearts, by which we are taught and commanded to love, and help, and do good to one another. Now this great God hath been pleased to make me concerned in your part of the world, and the king of the country, where I live, hath given me a great province therein; but I desire to enjoy it with your love and consent, that we may always live together as neighbours and friends; else what would the great God do to us, who hath made us, not to devour and destroy one another, but to live soberly and kindly together in the world? Now, I would have you well observe, that I am very sensible of the unkindness and injustice that have been too much exercised towards you by the people of these parts of the world, who have sought themselves, and to make great advantages by you, rather than to be examples of goodness and patience unto you, which I hear hath been a matter of trouble to you, and caused great grudgings and animosities, sometimes to the shedding of blood, which hath made the great God angry. But I am not such a man, as is well known in my own country. I have great love and regard toward you, and desire to win and gain your love and friendship by a kind, just and peaceable life; and the people I send are of the same mind, and shall, in all things, behave themselves accordingly; and, if in anything any shall offend you or your people, you shall have a full and speedy satisfaction for the same, by an equal number of just men on both sides; that, by no means you may have just occasion of being offended against them.
I shall shortly come to you myself, at which time we may more largely and freely confer and discourse of these matters, in the mean time I have sent my commissioners to treat with you about land, and a firm league of peace. Let me desire you to be kind to them, and the people, and receive these presents and tokens, which I have sent you, as a testimony of my good will to you, and my resolution to live justly, peaceably, and friendly with you.
I am, your loving Friend,
London, 18 October 1681 WILLIAM PENN. (x)
William Penn's historic treaty with the Indians of 1681 established for the colonists of eastern Pennsylvania an unprecedented bond between the Native American tribes of the Delaware Valley and Quaker settlers. The treaty, which by tradition took place at Shackamaxon, Pennsylvania, also became a landmark event in American folklore, serving as a narrative talisman for colonial and early Republican homesteaders in later years when tensions between white settlers and Native Americans flared.
Although Hicks' Penn's Treaty with the Indians commemorates the historic peace between Quakers and Native Americans of the Delaware Indian tribes, it does not allude to the English political subtext of the event. The grant of land from Maryland north to New York from Charles II to William Penn (1644-1718) in 1681 accomplished important ends for the Crown and the Quakers. For Charles II, whose return to the throne transpired in part because of naval and financial support by subjects such as Penn's father, the grant was a public means of handsomely repaying a debt to the son of a loyal supporter. The grant also enabled the Crown the means of shedding religious dissenters from England. Essentially regarded as religious anarchists in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Religious Society of Friends was the target severe punitive measures in both England and the New England colonies. For the Quakers, the grant provided a safe haven from religious persecution. While Penn granted voting rights only to Christians within his proprietorship, he extended otherwise broad political liberties and full religious freedom to all groups settling Pennsylvania. Based on his notion of "liberty of conscience," Penn sought to create a free society in which citizens respected each other and their government because of the freedoms afforded by both.(xi) By 1683, over 3,000 Europeans had resettled in Pennsylvania; within five years, the population of the colony had more than quadrupled.
While the date traditionally assigned to Penn's treaty with the Indians is 1682, scant physical evidence survives that a written treaty ever existed. William Penn only inhabited his colony from 1682-1684 and 1699-1701. Nonetheless, a letter written (reprinted above) by Penn in October 1681 and sent to his agents in Pennsylvania outlines his underlying notions in dealing with the Delaware Indian tribes. A peaceful arrangement with the Indians was not actually formalized until 1701. Despite the loss of control of Pennsylvania first and sporadically by the Penn Family beginning with William Penn's death in 1718 and later in 1755 by the Quakers, the ideals espoused in Penn's letter survived to anchor Quaker attitudes toward the Indians.
Tensions with the Indians among non-Quaker European settlers often held tragic results for both sides and placed the Quakers in an unusual position within the larger non-Quaker community. Clashes between colonists and Indians occurred in Pennsylvania concurrent with the larger military events of the era and usually on the agitation of the invading French or English troops. During the French and Indian War, these events occurred in 1756 and 1763 at Kittanning, Fort Pitt, Fort Ligonier, Bushy Run; during the American Revolution in 1778 at Minnisink. In reaction to the Indian raids of the French and Indian War, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting reiterated their desire for peaceful understanding with the Indians in a manner that was true to Penn's intentions. In 1759, the PYM noted, "The friendship and assistance of the Indians to the original Quaker settlers of Pennsylvania ought to be remembered as if it had happened in their own time, with all gratitude and thankfulness to the Indians"; and in 1763, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting dictated, "Friends should not purchase or remove to settle on such lands as have not been fairly and openly first purchased of the Indians, by those persons who are or may be authorized by the government to make such purchases".(xii) One year later, Philadelphians were shocked and outraged to see a small group of Quakers abandon their pacifism to take up arms against their fellow colonists in defense of the Indians after a group of twenty Conestoga Indians were murdered by western Pennsylvania settlers who felt threatened by the Indian presence. These same western settlers then marched on Philadelphia to take their grievance to the local government whom they felt were not adequately protecting them.(xiii) Hicks' Memoirs recalls his own youthful attraction to the colors and banners of the local militia, whose activities were required in response to Indian fears, and his subsequent disillusionment with military life.
EDWARD HICKS
Born in Attleborough, Pennsylvania in 1780 to Catherine and Isaac Hicks, Edward Hicks was effectively orphaned early in his life. His mother's death soon after Edward's birth and his Loyalist father's subsequent ruin in the wake of American's War for Independence left Edward to be raised in the nearby Quaker family of David and Elizabeth Twining. It was not until 1803, when Hicks was 23 years old that he formally embraced and was accepted into the Religious Society of Friends at Middletown, Pennsylvania; he married Sarah Worstall in that same year. Hicks began and maintained a career as a coach and ornamental sign painter in Newtown, Pennsylvania, though he experienced throughout his life consistent financial difficulties, particularly in the late 1810s and early 1820s. By 1812, he was accepted as a minister and began what he considered his more important career of missionary journeys, preaching his Quaker faith as far north as Niagara Falls, New York, and as far south as Goose Creek, Virginia. Edward Hicks was dedicated to his Quaker faith, and well known in Newtown not for his painting, but for his eloquent preaching. In 1815, Hicks was instrumental in securing the recently abandoned Newtown court house as a temporary Friends Meeting; Newtown received a more permanent Friends Meeting three years later also with the help of its magnetic local minister.
Despite Hicks' passion and renown as a minister, it was his ornamental painting that he did privately to express his faith for which he is almost exclusively known today. Hick's Quakerism permeated and gave meaning to all aspects of his painting, and it was predominantly to his close personal friends that he gave his small canvases as personal emblems of a shared faith. In addition to his religion fueling his creativity, events within the Quaker community affected Hicks and his work deeply as well. The schism formalized in 1827 between Orthodox and Hicksite Quakers produced well-documented results in Hicks' Peaceable Kingdoms. Hicks began to paint Penn's Treaty with the Indians after this rupture occurred; accordingly it is plausible that this image held meaning for Hicks as well as a symbol to follow one's Inner Light rather than slavishly adhere to Scripture.
While much has been written about Hicks' more famous Peaceable Kingdom series, it is fair to argue that the Penn's Treaty with the Indians group represented an equally important message to him. A secular interpretation of the same ideal, the Penn's Treaty with the Indians series espouses the same message of a world in which all beings live in harmony. This idea is underscored in the manner in which Hicks used the image of Penn. In the same way that the smaller sub-groups of the Penn's Treaty series serve to emphasize the larger message of those paintings, Hicks enhanced the prophecy of Isaiah with William Penn and his treaty. Of the sixty-two known Peaceable Kingdom paintings, thirty-nine of them include William Penn, with his arms in open friendship to the Indians, anchoring the background and driving further Hicks' message of peace and harmony. Of all Hicks' history and allegorical paintings, Penn's Treaty with the Indians is the second most populous subject he produced.
MARY LIPPINCOTT AND THE LIPPINCOTT FAMILY
Like Edward Hicks' ancestors, the Lippincott Family also followed a path to America well established by England's Quaker diaspora. The first Quaker Lippincotts to immigrate to America, Richard (1615/25-1683) and Abigail (nee Good or Goody, d. 1697), arrived in Dorchester, Massachusetts from England in 1641. Ironically, where New England's premiere Puritan colony was established as much to spare their own faithful of religious persecution in England, the Puritans were no more tolerant of divergent faiths than the Anglican establishment had been in England. This situation of continued religious persecution caused Richard and Abigail and their growing family to return to England where they settled in Plymouth. Like William Penn and most members of the Society of Friends in England at that time, Richard Lippincott was jailed for his Quaker faith, and in 1663 sailed with his wife and family once again for the American colonies. In 1663, Lippincott arrived in Rhode Island, and within two years had relocated again, first to Flushing, New York and finally to Shrewsbury, New Jersey where the family remained. From Shrewsbury, in Monmouth County, the Lippincott Family expanded with successive generations to Burlington and Mercer Counties in New Jersey and across the Delaware River to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. By the late 18th-early 19th century, the Lippincotts were a prosperous, land-owning family whose religious and marital ties connected them to many of the most important Quaker families of the area.
Dr. Henry Wood Lippincott (b. 1800), a cousin by marriage of the original owner of the painting offered here, lived in Fallsington, Pennsylvania, between Newtown and Moorestown, New Jersey, and maintained a journal of his early travels in the area in 1818. Titled "Lippincott's Tour" and inscribed on the frontispage, Written by H. Lippincott in the 18th year of his age - H. Lippincott Vol. 5th of his Enchiridion, and - August 3, 1818, Lippincott traveled for 1072 days and his observations provide first hand details of life in Bucks County. Travelling through the towns of Edward Hicks' youth and arriving in Newtown, Lippincott described the town accordingly,
In approaching Newtown, the road began to grow somewhat pleasanter, not being so excessively dusty as it was near Bristol, the quality of the earth in many places seemed to be changed to that of a reddish granite. The first building in going in the town, that attracted our notice was the Friends Meeting House, a building lately erected, not being yet finished: There was a considerable dispute among many of the members concerning it, on account partly of having the monthly meeting held alternately there and at Makefield, which was decided a propos E. Hicks a man possessed of strong rational faculties and great fluency of speech, seems to stand highest in the society of the neighborhood.
Lippincott went on to note that Newtown had previously been the seat of Bucks County, when it was "in great renown for gaming and horseracing, with many other of the lesser vices."
One year later in 1819, Mary Shoemaker Hallowell (1801-1880) was a student at West-Town Boarding School.
A daughter of Anthony Hallowell (1770-1802) and Jane (Shoemaker) Hallowell (1768-1847) of Abington, Pennsylvania, Mary Hallowell's childhood involved frequent relocation and personal loss. The death of Anthony Hallowell in April 1802 sent his wife and children to live with Jane Shoemaker Hallowell's father, Benjamin Shoemaker. Benjamin Shoemaker's death nine years later had a second and further splintering impact economically and functionally on his daughter and grandchildren. With the sale of Shoemaker's property, Mary's brothers James, Joseph, and Benjamin were sent to live with various Shoemaker uncles and cousins. Mary and her mother relocated briefly to Benjamin Shoemaker's brother's home in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, and later returned to Abington to live with a Hallowell relative. Mary was educated at various Friends schools including Hatboro, Abington and West-Town Boarding Schools in Pennsylvania and Fair Hill Boarding School in Maryland.
A teacher in her childhood schools by 1823, as well as in Rensselaerville, New York, in 1826-1827, Mary Hallowell married Isaac Lippincott (1785-1858), a slightly older widower, in Abington, Pennsylvania, in 1829. The marriage is also recorded in the minutes of Isaac Lippincott's Chester (New Jersey) Monthly Meeting. Chester Monthly Meeting and Haddonfield Quarterly Meeting recognized Mary S. Lippincott as a minister in 1830; these meetings were Hicksite. In 1842, Mary and Isaac moved to Moorestown, New Jersey, near Camden, and founded the Moorestown Boarding School for Girls, which existed until 1880. Between 1845 and 1867, Mary Lippincott was the Clerk of Women Friends at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Isaac, who had two children by his first marriage, and Mary had four children together. Of these six children, only an unmarried daughter survived Mary's death in 1888. Mary Lippincott died leaving no will and no probate inventory. Neither Isaac's nor her one surviving child's wills mention the painting illustrated here, suggesting the painting was Mary's personal property and it was given out of the immediate family upon Mary's death. The lack of substantive reference in any Lippincott probate record is not unusual. It is well documented that Hicks provided these mementos as tangible reminders of a shared faith to friends, relatives, and personal contacts with the majority of these recipients being Hicksite;(xiv) Mary S. Lippincott was all of these but a blood relative.
While the nature of the connection between Mary Lippincott and Edward Hicks is not clear, it is clear that they knew each other. Beyond their shared prominence within their respective and nearby Quaker communities, other evidence attests to the bonds between them. A cousin through her maternal grandmother of Hicks' mentor, John Comly, Mary Lippincott wrote to and mentioned Comly in familiar and friendly terms in various notes in her personal papers. In 1850, Mary Lippincott wrote to an unidentified friend that she and her husband stayed with Comly's widow, Sarah, for two days shortly after Comly's death that year.(xv) This intimacy with one of Hicks' closest personal friends would have provided a greater opportunity for the two ministers to forge their own relationship than their respective local renown. In February 1849, several months prior to Hicks' death in September, Hicks decided to abandon his ministry due to his health. Mary Lippincott wrote to Hicks begging him not to do so, "Dear Edward, don't give up; don't despair!... Well do I remember the voice of encouragement from thy lips, nearly thirty years ago (the first time I ever heard thee)." (xvi) In the late fall 1849, Mary Lippincott wrote to another friend, "After the interment of the body of our beloved friend Edward Hicks, we dined with a Friend."(xvii) This letter shows that not only did Lippincott travel the thirty miles to attend Hicks funeral, one of the largest events in Bucks County history to that time, but her syntax pointedly distinguished Hicks in personal terms as a friend rather than generically, as another member of the Society of Friends, the manner in which she referred to their dining partner. Lippincott's diary entries and letters are remarkably consistent in language, syntax and imagery. Her letters are all signed with the initials she used, "M.S.L.," suggesting she identified more with her Shoemaker family, whose members she knew better, than with her Hallowell family. The anonymous testimonial to Edward Hicks reprinted in part at the beginning of this essay and published in full shortly after Hicks' death in the Friends Weekly Intelligencer on 8 December 1849 attests to the minister's faith and character. More personally, it equates the depth and conviction of Hicks' faith with his passion as a painter. The testimonial mentions two of Hicks' painting subjects, his many Peaceable Kingdom and Penn's Treaty with the Indians, and is initialed at its conclusion "M.S.L.". Mary Shoemaker Lippincott, who is known to have spoken at Hick' funeral, emerges as the most likely author of this eloquent and moving portrayal of a dear friend.(xviii) Her specific mention of the subject of the painting Hicks gave her becomes an especially real remembrance of a treasured gift.
ABBREVIATIONS
Ford Alice Ford, Edward Hicks: His Life and Art (New York, 1985)
Mather and Miller Eleanor Price Mather and Dorothy Canning Miller, Edward Hicks: His Peaceable Kingdoms and Other Paintings (East Brunswick, NJ, 1983)
Weekley Carolyn J. Weekley, The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks (Williamsburg, 1999)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahlstrom, Sidney, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, 1972)
Fanning, John Watson, The Indian Treaty for the Lands Now the Site of Philadelphia and its Adjacent Country (Philadelphia, 1836)
Ford, Alice, Edward Hicks: His Life and Art (New York, 1985)
________, Research Notes for the Biography of Edward Hicks (n. p., 1952; MSS, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College)
Gaustad, Edwin, ed., A Documentary History of Religion in America to the Civil War (Grand Rapids, MI: 1982)
Hicks, Edward, Memoirs of the Life and Religious Labors of Edward Hicks, Late of Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
Written by Himself (Philadelphia, 1851)
_____, Collection of Edward Hicks Papers, 1836-1849 (n. p., MSS, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College)
Hinshaw, William Wade, Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy (Washington, D.C., 1948)
Lindsey, Jack, Worldly Goods: The Arts of Early Pennsylvania, 1680-1758 (Philadelphia, 1999)
Lippincott, Henry Wood, Lippincott's Tour (Fallsington, Pennsylvania, 1818)
Lippincott, Mary S. Life and Letters of Mary S. Lippincott, Late of Camden, New Jersey, A Minister in the Society of Friends
(Philadelphia, 1893).
Makefield Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, Minutes, 1847-18(n. p., MSS, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College)
Mather, Eleanor Price and Miller, Dorothy Canning, Edward Hicks: His Peaceable Kingdoms and Other Paintings (East Brunswick, NJ, 1983)
Olsen, Judith M., Lippincott: Five Generations of the Descendants of Richard and Abigail Lippincott (Woodbury, NJ 1982)
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Symbols of Peace: William Penn's Treaty with the Indians (Philadelphia, 1976)
Pullinger, Edna, A Dream of Peace: Edward Hicks of Newtown (Philadelphia, 1973)
Weekley, Carolyn J. The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks (Williamsburg, 1999)
ENDNOTES
i. Friends' Weekly Intelligencer, Philadelphia, Twelfth Month 8, 1849, p. 292.
ii. Ford, p. 119.
iii. Mather and Miller, p. 82.
iv. Ibid. , p. 177, no. 88.
v. see Mather and Miller, p. 180, no. 91.
vi. The remaining are illustrated and discussed in Mather and Miller, p. 172, no. 83; pp. 174-175, nos. 85-86; p. 183, no. 94. The location of a seventh canvas formerly in a private collection is presently unknown; illustrated Mather and Miller, p. 177, no. 88.
vii. The first, illustrated Weekley, p. 81, fig 65; the second, illustrated Mather and Miller, p.179, no. 90.
viii. Mather and Miller, p. 175, no. 86.
ix. Weekley, p. 1 and p. 156.
x. Gaustad, Edwin, ed., A Documentary History of Religion in America to The Civil War (Grand Rapids, MI: 1982), pp. 123-124 reprinted from Some Account of the Conduct of the Religious Society of Friends towards the Indian tribes... (London: Edward Marsh, 1844), pp. 29-30.
xi. Ibid., p.119.
xii. Gaustad., pp. 192-193; reprinted from Some Account of the Conduct of the Religious Society of Friends towards the Indian tribes... (London: Edward Marsh, 1844), pp. 88-89.
xiii. Ibid., p.178.
xiv. Weekley, p. 6.
xv. Lippincott, Mary S., Life and Letters of Mary S. Lippincott, Late of Camden, New Jersey, A Minister in the Society of Friends (Philadelphia, 1893), pp. 183-184.
xvi. Ford, p. 233.
xvii. Mary Lippincott, p. 183.
xviii. Ford, p. 249.
M.S.L. (i)
One of the most important American self-taught artists, Edward Hicks (1780-1849) created a vision and hope for his native country expressed in the harmony of his paintings. Like his more famous and prolifically produced renderings of the Peaceable Kingdom, Penn's Treaty with the Indians is a secular realization of the same goal. Unlike the image based on the prophecy of Isaiah, Penn's Treaty with the Indians was based on an historical event. This reality made the image not only an example for viewers of the painting to learn from and aspire to, but an attainable goal as well: a peace among adversaries had happened, not in Scripture, but in Pennsylvania.
The image and ideal of Penn's Treaty with the Indians is among the most transcendent and enduring in American folklore. In the pantheon of American folk history, it occupies a vitality and importance equal to the first Puritan Thanksgiving with the Indians, the story of Pocahontas, and the saga of Sacagawea leading Lewis and Clark through the wilderness. Penn's Treaty with the Indians was literally carved into our national heritage with Nicholas Gevelot's relief-carved panel for the Capitol Rotunda in 1824. Yet despite the allure of these romanticized histories of America's original population, the reality of European colonial relations with Native Americans was not as heroic. Penn's great experiment in the New World was more complex than its oral history allows, and the relationship of the Quakers with European settlers and Native Americans was at times more conflicted than the image of plain pacifists presents.
Mary S. Lippincott, the original owner of the painting illustrated here, was a Quaker schoolteacher from Moorestown, New Jersey, and the probable author of the recollection of Edward Hicks printed above. An important minister in her (Hicksite) Monthly and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Mary S. Lippincott was also a friend of Edward Hicks. Her personal and family history sheds important light on the network of Quaker family and community relations between Burlington County, New Jersey, where she lived, and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where Hicks and her Lippincott relatives lived immediately across the Delaware River, only 30 miles away.
PENN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS: AN AMERICAN FOLK LEGEND
While Hicks' image of Penn's Treaty with the Indians is among the most famous renditions of that scene, it was not the first. Commissioned by Williams Penn's son to immortalize the agreement, Benjamin West (1738-1820) painted this first and in even in its time, most famous Penn's Treaty with the Indians in 1771-72 (see Illustration 1). The canvas shows Penn as a middle-aged man, not the thirty-seven year old he was at the time of the treaty in 1682, and in costume more appropriate to West's era than the late 17th century. (ii) This painting is important not only as the prototype for later artists, but also as a political statement by West. As a Pennsylvanian and Quaker living in London on the eve of the American Revolution, the heroic nature and magnitude of West's canvas (75x107in.) strongly implied that events in America were as important and worthy of history painting as any classical subject. In 1775, John Boydell published a widely distributed print engraved by John Hall of the West painting in London, which reproduced the original, but flipped the scene to its mirror opposite (see Lot 1 and Illustration 2). Inspired by West, fellow American Edward Savage (1761-1817) also painted a version of Penn's Treaty in 1800 which has been cited as the source for Hicks in the Penn's Treaty series and other subjects. It is more likely that the print after West was Hicks' source. It is certain that Hicks never saw the original painting by West as the canvas did not come to America until 1878 when it was given to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Hicks was known to have worked from print sources for his paintings, such as the wild animals of his Peaceable Kingdoms and the figure of Jesse Leedom in his Twining Farm.(iii) The Boydell print would have been readily accessible to Hicks, and his replication of certain inconcsistencies in the print indicate Hicks' knowledge of it. The features of the West painting reproduced by Boydell and Hicks include a series of distinct pine trees rising above and receding to the background of an otherwise muted and indistinct background. The features of the West painting which are not clearly represented in the Boydell print include what are in the original two weeping trees by the water of the background, and the feather headdress held by one of the Indians next to Penn. These two trees appear broken and falling over in the Boydell print. Hicks reproduced only one of the trees at an unnatural and gale force angle in the versions owned by The Bucks County Historical Society (see Illustration 8) and another illustrated and discussed in Mather and Miller.(iv) Other versions presumably painted later do not include what Hicks must have considered an unsuccessful element. Likewise, Hicks has completed the metamorphosis of the headdress held by an Indian adjacent to Penn which in the Boydell print has begun to assume the attributes of a large fan.
Characteristic of Hicks' work, the painting offered here is comprised of distinct but related groups of activity. Like the Peaceable Kingdom series, the central activity appears to transpire at the edge of a great chasm. The principle group of the painting is William Penn, with his arms opened in embracing friendship, and his immediate coterie of Friends. Adjacent in conversation and standing within the picture, though lacking a commensurately clear leader, is the group of Delaware Indians to whom Penn directs his offerings of peace, friendship and bounty. Below this, in a synopsis of the larger action, are two Quakers offering bolts of costly textiles to two Indians. In the background are a Quaker and an Indian shaking hands. In the left foreground is an elaborately dressed Squaw nursing her child, and on the right are two men awaiting their opportunity to make further offerings to the Indians. These satellite clusters serve to underscore and reinforce the central activity and theme of the painting: harmonious and nurturing companionship between strangers or presumed enemies. The entire meeting takes place under the branches of the Treaty Elm at Shackamaxon. As such, the tree becomes a metaphor for the spiritual nature of the event. As a creation of the Divinity and placed on this earth by Him, the Elm at Shackamaxon is both witness and representative of the sanctioning and protective canopy of the Creator over the Treaty and its participants.
In addition to the Wm. Penn's Treaty offered here, Edward Hicks painted at least thirteen other known oil on canvas versions of the subject, as well as two painted signboards. Six canvases are in museum collections and include the National Gallery of Art (see Illustration 3), the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center at Colonial Williamsburg (see Illustration 5), The Thomas Gilcrease Museum of American Art (see Illustration 6), The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (see Illustration 7), The Mercer Museum of the Bucks County Historical Society (see illustration 8), and the Shelburne Museum.(v) Six canvases are in private collections (for one, see Illustration 4).(vi) The two painted signboard versions of Penn's Treaty with the Indians are in the collections of the Newtown Historic Association and Widener College.(vii) The range of characters, inscriptions, activities and architecture vary widely within the oil on canvas group.
Five paintings in the group, including the version offered here, include inscribed and dated rectangular blocks at the base of the painting. The remaining four in this group are in the collections of the National Gallery (Illustration 3), Shelburne Museum, and two are in private collections (one, Illustration 4). Of these five, the Lippincott version has the fewest words. This verbal simplicity provides a visual link between the inscribed canvas group and the three canvases whose original frames are lettered PENN'S TREATY at the base. The mahogany corners blocks of the frames of these canvases also occupy a similar visual space to the date blocks and unpainted reserves of the inscribed group (see Illustrations 5, 6 and 8).
In addition to differing arrangements of scene and text, the quantity and placement of Indians attending the treaty also changes. Hicks varied the number of Indians to between ten and fourteen attending the event. The original West canvas included nineteen Indians, the Boydell print appears to have twenty; the Lippincott picture is among the four canvases with the highest number of Indians and includes fourteen. Only four canvase, in addition to the Lippincott Treaty, include the Squaw nursing her baby at the lower left of the canvas.
The presentation of Hicks' symbol of sumptuous, costly offerings, the bolts of textiles, also varies within the group. While all feature the central unfurled rolls of clothe, the canvases at Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, the Gilcrease and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as well as two in private collections, omit the two waiting sailors of the original West scene and replace them with open trunks of brightly colored rolled fabrics (see Illustrations 5-7). The National Gallery, Bucks County Historical Society, Shelburne, Lippincott and two private collection Treaties show a greater fidelity to the West canvas by retaining the two sailors in their original positions (see Illustrations 3, 4, and 8). A canvas in a private collection links the two groups in its omission of the two sailors and the additional bolts of fabric.(viii)
Hicks attempts the most faithful replication of West's painting only in the canvas at the Mercer Museum of the Bucks County Historical Society by including the gabled, dormered and arched entry stone building immediately to the left behind Penn (see Illustration 8). All other versions show either a hidden central structure to the background or a much more simple, vernacular clapboard edifice whose orientation to the scene changes.
The most consistent feature of all the canvases is the presence of the anchored ship and dinghy with arriving Quakers in the distance. While this far landscape changes in terms of the specific activities of its participants, the consistent theme is that the arriving Quakers and the Indians are almost always involved in some form of greeting or friendly communication. The Lippincott, National Gallery and Gilcrease Museum canvases all include Quakers and Indians shaking hands or conversing closely (see Illustrations 3 and 6).
The date most recently assigned to the earliest Penn's Treaty painting is 1830.(ix) The Penn's Treaty with the Indians in the collection of the Bucks County Historical Society represents the most faithful reproduction of all the elements of the West original, and so must be considered among, if not the earliest version of the scene done by Hicks (see Illustration 8). If the manner in which The Bucks County Historical Society's painting has been organized and framed is any indication, then its comparables at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center and Gilcrease Museum fall into this earlier category as well (see Illustrations 5 and 6). The canvas in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston takes the most licenses with the original in its inclusion of tents at the background left. Whether this difference indicates that Hicks was trying new motifs for the scene which he rejected in later works, or whether this version shows the furthest evolution from the original is unknown. Given the variety of elements seen in all the canvases, many of which are included in the Lippincott painting, it can be considered that the version offered here is among the middle to later of the group, and probably painted after 1840. Events in the life of its original owner may shed some light to this end. In 1842, Mary S. Lippincott and her husband, Isaac, established a Friends boarding school for girls in Moorestown, New Jersey. It is possible, although entirely conjectural, that such an important mission as the education of young minds may have inspired an instructional gift in the form of a painting whose lessons teach history and the tenets of Quakerism.
PENN'S TREATY WITH THE INDIANS: THE HISTORIC REALITY
My Friends,
There is a great God and power that hath made the world, and all things therein, to whom you and I, and all people owe their being and well-being, and to whom you and I must one day give an account for all that we do in the world. This great God hath written his law in our hearts, by which we are taught and commanded to love, and help, and do good to one another. Now this great God hath been pleased to make me concerned in your part of the world, and the king of the country, where I live, hath given me a great province therein; but I desire to enjoy it with your love and consent, that we may always live together as neighbours and friends; else what would the great God do to us, who hath made us, not to devour and destroy one another, but to live soberly and kindly together in the world? Now, I would have you well observe, that I am very sensible of the unkindness and injustice that have been too much exercised towards you by the people of these parts of the world, who have sought themselves, and to make great advantages by you, rather than to be examples of goodness and patience unto you, which I hear hath been a matter of trouble to you, and caused great grudgings and animosities, sometimes to the shedding of blood, which hath made the great God angry. But I am not such a man, as is well known in my own country. I have great love and regard toward you, and desire to win and gain your love and friendship by a kind, just and peaceable life; and the people I send are of the same mind, and shall, in all things, behave themselves accordingly; and, if in anything any shall offend you or your people, you shall have a full and speedy satisfaction for the same, by an equal number of just men on both sides; that, by no means you may have just occasion of being offended against them.
I shall shortly come to you myself, at which time we may more largely and freely confer and discourse of these matters, in the mean time I have sent my commissioners to treat with you about land, and a firm league of peace. Let me desire you to be kind to them, and the people, and receive these presents and tokens, which I have sent you, as a testimony of my good will to you, and my resolution to live justly, peaceably, and friendly with you.
I am, your loving Friend,
London, 18 October 1681 WILLIAM PENN. (x)
William Penn's historic treaty with the Indians of 1681 established for the colonists of eastern Pennsylvania an unprecedented bond between the Native American tribes of the Delaware Valley and Quaker settlers. The treaty, which by tradition took place at Shackamaxon, Pennsylvania, also became a landmark event in American folklore, serving as a narrative talisman for colonial and early Republican homesteaders in later years when tensions between white settlers and Native Americans flared.
Although Hicks' Penn's Treaty with the Indians commemorates the historic peace between Quakers and Native Americans of the Delaware Indian tribes, it does not allude to the English political subtext of the event. The grant of land from Maryland north to New York from Charles II to William Penn (1644-1718) in 1681 accomplished important ends for the Crown and the Quakers. For Charles II, whose return to the throne transpired in part because of naval and financial support by subjects such as Penn's father, the grant was a public means of handsomely repaying a debt to the son of a loyal supporter. The grant also enabled the Crown the means of shedding religious dissenters from England. Essentially regarded as religious anarchists in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Religious Society of Friends was the target severe punitive measures in both England and the New England colonies. For the Quakers, the grant provided a safe haven from religious persecution. While Penn granted voting rights only to Christians within his proprietorship, he extended otherwise broad political liberties and full religious freedom to all groups settling Pennsylvania. Based on his notion of "liberty of conscience," Penn sought to create a free society in which citizens respected each other and their government because of the freedoms afforded by both.(xi) By 1683, over 3,000 Europeans had resettled in Pennsylvania; within five years, the population of the colony had more than quadrupled.
While the date traditionally assigned to Penn's treaty with the Indians is 1682, scant physical evidence survives that a written treaty ever existed. William Penn only inhabited his colony from 1682-1684 and 1699-1701. Nonetheless, a letter written (reprinted above) by Penn in October 1681 and sent to his agents in Pennsylvania outlines his underlying notions in dealing with the Delaware Indian tribes. A peaceful arrangement with the Indians was not actually formalized until 1701. Despite the loss of control of Pennsylvania first and sporadically by the Penn Family beginning with William Penn's death in 1718 and later in 1755 by the Quakers, the ideals espoused in Penn's letter survived to anchor Quaker attitudes toward the Indians.
Tensions with the Indians among non-Quaker European settlers often held tragic results for both sides and placed the Quakers in an unusual position within the larger non-Quaker community. Clashes between colonists and Indians occurred in Pennsylvania concurrent with the larger military events of the era and usually on the agitation of the invading French or English troops. During the French and Indian War, these events occurred in 1756 and 1763 at Kittanning, Fort Pitt, Fort Ligonier, Bushy Run; during the American Revolution in 1778 at Minnisink. In reaction to the Indian raids of the French and Indian War, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting reiterated their desire for peaceful understanding with the Indians in a manner that was true to Penn's intentions. In 1759, the PYM noted, "The friendship and assistance of the Indians to the original Quaker settlers of Pennsylvania ought to be remembered as if it had happened in their own time, with all gratitude and thankfulness to the Indians"; and in 1763, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting dictated, "Friends should not purchase or remove to settle on such lands as have not been fairly and openly first purchased of the Indians, by those persons who are or may be authorized by the government to make such purchases".(xii) One year later, Philadelphians were shocked and outraged to see a small group of Quakers abandon their pacifism to take up arms against their fellow colonists in defense of the Indians after a group of twenty Conestoga Indians were murdered by western Pennsylvania settlers who felt threatened by the Indian presence. These same western settlers then marched on Philadelphia to take their grievance to the local government whom they felt were not adequately protecting them.(xiii) Hicks' Memoirs recalls his own youthful attraction to the colors and banners of the local militia, whose activities were required in response to Indian fears, and his subsequent disillusionment with military life.
EDWARD HICKS
Born in Attleborough, Pennsylvania in 1780 to Catherine and Isaac Hicks, Edward Hicks was effectively orphaned early in his life. His mother's death soon after Edward's birth and his Loyalist father's subsequent ruin in the wake of American's War for Independence left Edward to be raised in the nearby Quaker family of David and Elizabeth Twining. It was not until 1803, when Hicks was 23 years old that he formally embraced and was accepted into the Religious Society of Friends at Middletown, Pennsylvania; he married Sarah Worstall in that same year. Hicks began and maintained a career as a coach and ornamental sign painter in Newtown, Pennsylvania, though he experienced throughout his life consistent financial difficulties, particularly in the late 1810s and early 1820s. By 1812, he was accepted as a minister and began what he considered his more important career of missionary journeys, preaching his Quaker faith as far north as Niagara Falls, New York, and as far south as Goose Creek, Virginia. Edward Hicks was dedicated to his Quaker faith, and well known in Newtown not for his painting, but for his eloquent preaching. In 1815, Hicks was instrumental in securing the recently abandoned Newtown court house as a temporary Friends Meeting; Newtown received a more permanent Friends Meeting three years later also with the help of its magnetic local minister.
Despite Hicks' passion and renown as a minister, it was his ornamental painting that he did privately to express his faith for which he is almost exclusively known today. Hick's Quakerism permeated and gave meaning to all aspects of his painting, and it was predominantly to his close personal friends that he gave his small canvases as personal emblems of a shared faith. In addition to his religion fueling his creativity, events within the Quaker community affected Hicks and his work deeply as well. The schism formalized in 1827 between Orthodox and Hicksite Quakers produced well-documented results in Hicks' Peaceable Kingdoms. Hicks began to paint Penn's Treaty with the Indians after this rupture occurred; accordingly it is plausible that this image held meaning for Hicks as well as a symbol to follow one's Inner Light rather than slavishly adhere to Scripture.
While much has been written about Hicks' more famous Peaceable Kingdom series, it is fair to argue that the Penn's Treaty with the Indians group represented an equally important message to him. A secular interpretation of the same ideal, the Penn's Treaty with the Indians series espouses the same message of a world in which all beings live in harmony. This idea is underscored in the manner in which Hicks used the image of Penn. In the same way that the smaller sub-groups of the Penn's Treaty series serve to emphasize the larger message of those paintings, Hicks enhanced the prophecy of Isaiah with William Penn and his treaty. Of the sixty-two known Peaceable Kingdom paintings, thirty-nine of them include William Penn, with his arms in open friendship to the Indians, anchoring the background and driving further Hicks' message of peace and harmony. Of all Hicks' history and allegorical paintings, Penn's Treaty with the Indians is the second most populous subject he produced.
MARY LIPPINCOTT AND THE LIPPINCOTT FAMILY
Like Edward Hicks' ancestors, the Lippincott Family also followed a path to America well established by England's Quaker diaspora. The first Quaker Lippincotts to immigrate to America, Richard (1615/25-1683) and Abigail (nee Good or Goody, d. 1697), arrived in Dorchester, Massachusetts from England in 1641. Ironically, where New England's premiere Puritan colony was established as much to spare their own faithful of religious persecution in England, the Puritans were no more tolerant of divergent faiths than the Anglican establishment had been in England. This situation of continued religious persecution caused Richard and Abigail and their growing family to return to England where they settled in Plymouth. Like William Penn and most members of the Society of Friends in England at that time, Richard Lippincott was jailed for his Quaker faith, and in 1663 sailed with his wife and family once again for the American colonies. In 1663, Lippincott arrived in Rhode Island, and within two years had relocated again, first to Flushing, New York and finally to Shrewsbury, New Jersey where the family remained. From Shrewsbury, in Monmouth County, the Lippincott Family expanded with successive generations to Burlington and Mercer Counties in New Jersey and across the Delaware River to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. By the late 18th-early 19th century, the Lippincotts were a prosperous, land-owning family whose religious and marital ties connected them to many of the most important Quaker families of the area.
Dr. Henry Wood Lippincott (b. 1800), a cousin by marriage of the original owner of the painting offered here, lived in Fallsington, Pennsylvania, between Newtown and Moorestown, New Jersey, and maintained a journal of his early travels in the area in 1818. Titled "Lippincott's Tour" and inscribed on the frontispage, Written by H. Lippincott in the 18th year of his age - H. Lippincott Vol. 5th of his Enchiridion, and - August 3, 1818, Lippincott traveled for 1072 days and his observations provide first hand details of life in Bucks County. Travelling through the towns of Edward Hicks' youth and arriving in Newtown, Lippincott described the town accordingly,
In approaching Newtown, the road began to grow somewhat pleasanter, not being so excessively dusty as it was near Bristol, the quality of the earth in many places seemed to be changed to that of a reddish granite. The first building in going in the town, that attracted our notice was the Friends Meeting House, a building lately erected, not being yet finished: There was a considerable dispute among many of the members concerning it, on account partly of having the monthly meeting held alternately there and at Makefield, which was decided a propos E. Hicks a man possessed of strong rational faculties and great fluency of speech, seems to stand highest in the society of the neighborhood.
Lippincott went on to note that Newtown had previously been the seat of Bucks County, when it was "in great renown for gaming and horseracing, with many other of the lesser vices."
One year later in 1819, Mary Shoemaker Hallowell (1801-1880) was a student at West-Town Boarding School.
A daughter of Anthony Hallowell (1770-1802) and Jane (Shoemaker) Hallowell (1768-1847) of Abington, Pennsylvania, Mary Hallowell's childhood involved frequent relocation and personal loss. The death of Anthony Hallowell in April 1802 sent his wife and children to live with Jane Shoemaker Hallowell's father, Benjamin Shoemaker. Benjamin Shoemaker's death nine years later had a second and further splintering impact economically and functionally on his daughter and grandchildren. With the sale of Shoemaker's property, Mary's brothers James, Joseph, and Benjamin were sent to live with various Shoemaker uncles and cousins. Mary and her mother relocated briefly to Benjamin Shoemaker's brother's home in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, and later returned to Abington to live with a Hallowell relative. Mary was educated at various Friends schools including Hatboro, Abington and West-Town Boarding Schools in Pennsylvania and Fair Hill Boarding School in Maryland.
A teacher in her childhood schools by 1823, as well as in Rensselaerville, New York, in 1826-1827, Mary Hallowell married Isaac Lippincott (1785-1858), a slightly older widower, in Abington, Pennsylvania, in 1829. The marriage is also recorded in the minutes of Isaac Lippincott's Chester (New Jersey) Monthly Meeting. Chester Monthly Meeting and Haddonfield Quarterly Meeting recognized Mary S. Lippincott as a minister in 1830; these meetings were Hicksite. In 1842, Mary and Isaac moved to Moorestown, New Jersey, near Camden, and founded the Moorestown Boarding School for Girls, which existed until 1880. Between 1845 and 1867, Mary Lippincott was the Clerk of Women Friends at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Isaac, who had two children by his first marriage, and Mary had four children together. Of these six children, only an unmarried daughter survived Mary's death in 1888. Mary Lippincott died leaving no will and no probate inventory. Neither Isaac's nor her one surviving child's wills mention the painting illustrated here, suggesting the painting was Mary's personal property and it was given out of the immediate family upon Mary's death. The lack of substantive reference in any Lippincott probate record is not unusual. It is well documented that Hicks provided these mementos as tangible reminders of a shared faith to friends, relatives, and personal contacts with the majority of these recipients being Hicksite;(xiv) Mary S. Lippincott was all of these but a blood relative.
While the nature of the connection between Mary Lippincott and Edward Hicks is not clear, it is clear that they knew each other. Beyond their shared prominence within their respective and nearby Quaker communities, other evidence attests to the bonds between them. A cousin through her maternal grandmother of Hicks' mentor, John Comly, Mary Lippincott wrote to and mentioned Comly in familiar and friendly terms in various notes in her personal papers. In 1850, Mary Lippincott wrote to an unidentified friend that she and her husband stayed with Comly's widow, Sarah, for two days shortly after Comly's death that year.(xv) This intimacy with one of Hicks' closest personal friends would have provided a greater opportunity for the two ministers to forge their own relationship than their respective local renown. In February 1849, several months prior to Hicks' death in September, Hicks decided to abandon his ministry due to his health. Mary Lippincott wrote to Hicks begging him not to do so, "Dear Edward, don't give up; don't despair!... Well do I remember the voice of encouragement from thy lips, nearly thirty years ago (the first time I ever heard thee)." (xvi) In the late fall 1849, Mary Lippincott wrote to another friend, "After the interment of the body of our beloved friend Edward Hicks, we dined with a Friend."(xvii) This letter shows that not only did Lippincott travel the thirty miles to attend Hicks funeral, one of the largest events in Bucks County history to that time, but her syntax pointedly distinguished Hicks in personal terms as a friend rather than generically, as another member of the Society of Friends, the manner in which she referred to their dining partner. Lippincott's diary entries and letters are remarkably consistent in language, syntax and imagery. Her letters are all signed with the initials she used, "M.S.L.," suggesting she identified more with her Shoemaker family, whose members she knew better, than with her Hallowell family. The anonymous testimonial to Edward Hicks reprinted in part at the beginning of this essay and published in full shortly after Hicks' death in the Friends Weekly Intelligencer on 8 December 1849 attests to the minister's faith and character. More personally, it equates the depth and conviction of Hicks' faith with his passion as a painter. The testimonial mentions two of Hicks' painting subjects, his many Peaceable Kingdom and Penn's Treaty with the Indians, and is initialed at its conclusion "M.S.L.". Mary Shoemaker Lippincott, who is known to have spoken at Hick' funeral, emerges as the most likely author of this eloquent and moving portrayal of a dear friend.(xviii) Her specific mention of the subject of the painting Hicks gave her becomes an especially real remembrance of a treasured gift.
ABBREVIATIONS
Ford Alice Ford, Edward Hicks: His Life and Art (New York, 1985)
Mather and Miller Eleanor Price Mather and Dorothy Canning Miller, Edward Hicks: His Peaceable Kingdoms and Other Paintings (East Brunswick, NJ, 1983)
Weekley Carolyn J. Weekley, The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks (Williamsburg, 1999)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahlstrom, Sidney, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, 1972)
Fanning, John Watson, The Indian Treaty for the Lands Now the Site of Philadelphia and its Adjacent Country (Philadelphia, 1836)
Ford, Alice, Edward Hicks: His Life and Art (New York, 1985)
________, Research Notes for the Biography of Edward Hicks (n. p., 1952; MSS, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College)
Gaustad, Edwin, ed., A Documentary History of Religion in America to the Civil War (Grand Rapids, MI: 1982)
Hicks, Edward, Memoirs of the Life and Religious Labors of Edward Hicks, Late of Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
Written by Himself (Philadelphia, 1851)
_____, Collection of Edward Hicks Papers, 1836-1849 (n. p., MSS, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College)
Hinshaw, William Wade, Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy (Washington, D.C., 1948)
Lindsey, Jack, Worldly Goods: The Arts of Early Pennsylvania, 1680-1758 (Philadelphia, 1999)
Lippincott, Henry Wood, Lippincott's Tour (Fallsington, Pennsylvania, 1818)
Lippincott, Mary S. Life and Letters of Mary S. Lippincott, Late of Camden, New Jersey, A Minister in the Society of Friends
(Philadelphia, 1893).
Makefield Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, Minutes, 1847-18(n. p., MSS, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College)
Mather, Eleanor Price and Miller, Dorothy Canning, Edward Hicks: His Peaceable Kingdoms and Other Paintings (East Brunswick, NJ, 1983)
Olsen, Judith M., Lippincott: Five Generations of the Descendants of Richard and Abigail Lippincott (Woodbury, NJ 1982)
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Symbols of Peace: William Penn's Treaty with the Indians (Philadelphia, 1976)
Pullinger, Edna, A Dream of Peace: Edward Hicks of Newtown (Philadelphia, 1973)
Weekley, Carolyn J. The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks (Williamsburg, 1999)
ENDNOTES
i. Friends' Weekly Intelligencer, Philadelphia, Twelfth Month 8, 1849, p. 292.
ii. Ford, p. 119.
iii. Mather and Miller, p. 82.
iv. Ibid. , p. 177, no. 88.
v. see Mather and Miller, p. 180, no. 91.
vi. The remaining are illustrated and discussed in Mather and Miller, p. 172, no. 83; pp. 174-175, nos. 85-86; p. 183, no. 94. The location of a seventh canvas formerly in a private collection is presently unknown; illustrated Mather and Miller, p. 177, no. 88.
vii. The first, illustrated Weekley, p. 81, fig 65; the second, illustrated Mather and Miller, p.179, no. 90.
viii. Mather and Miller, p. 175, no. 86.
ix. Weekley, p. 1 and p. 156.
x. Gaustad, Edwin, ed., A Documentary History of Religion in America to The Civil War (Grand Rapids, MI: 1982), pp. 123-124 reprinted from Some Account of the Conduct of the Religious Society of Friends towards the Indian tribes... (London: Edward Marsh, 1844), pp. 29-30.
xi. Ibid., p.119.
xii. Gaustad., pp. 192-193; reprinted from Some Account of the Conduct of the Religious Society of Friends towards the Indian tribes... (London: Edward Marsh, 1844), pp. 88-89.
xiii. Ibid., p.178.
xiv. Weekley, p. 6.
xv. Lippincott, Mary S., Life and Letters of Mary S. Lippincott, Late of Camden, New Jersey, A Minister in the Society of Friends (Philadelphia, 1893), pp. 183-184.
xvi. Ford, p. 233.
xvii. Mary Lippincott, p. 183.
xviii. Ford, p. 249.