The nature of Edward Hicks's painting - Cover Story

In his earliest Peaceable Kingdom paintings Hicks was obviously drawing his inspiration from print sources and had probably examined firsthand the canvases of academic painters. In a sense he was teaching himself, and there was much he did not understand about this kind of painting. An examination using X-radiography of the painting in Plate IX, for example, reveals that he painted a complete sky with clouds and a horizon of hills before covering most of it with the foliage seen now. Under microscopic examination of the layers in cross-section, it becomes apparent that there is a minute layer of accumulated dirt between the early sky and the foliage, indicating that some time had passed before he made this addition. This version of the Peaceable Kingdom looks more academic than many others. The composition is highly structured and the figures are rendered with a greater degree of realism. The well-developed sky imparts a sense of atmospheric perspective that also suggests Hicks's knowledge of academic styles.

The kid in the right foreground seems particularly realistic and close to its print source. X-radiography confirms that Hicks altered the position of the left front leg, perhaps to correct a problem he had rendering foreshortened perspective (Pl. IXa). The animal is more sculptural than its later counterparts because of the heavy impasto used to render the fur. Such thick applications of paint were impractical for signs and ornamental wares, which were subject to wear, and Hicks rarely used them. It seems likely that for the kid in Plate IX he was imitating a passage of impasto he saw in an academic painting.

By the mid-1830s Hicks had completed many versions of the Peaceable Kingdom and was familiar enough with the animals to produce their shapes, poses, and coloring from memory. As a result they became less realistic and more stylized than the kid in Plates IX and IXa. The version painted in 1844 for Joseph Watson (Pl. X and cover) illustrates his complete familiarity with his subject and little reliance on academic models. There is a minimum of underdrawing in graphite. Of all the Peaceable Kingdoms examined for this study, this is the most painterly.

In the 1980s Eleanore Price Mather discovered the print sources [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 1, 3 OMITTED] for Hicks's painting of James Cornell's prize bull (Pl. XII) among a group of prints by Gustav Jakob Canton collected by her grandfather James Price.(7) The Prices and the Hickses had known each other during the artist's lifetime. Her comparison of the prints and the painting showed that four of the sheep and the pose of the bull were nearly identical. A recent study of the prints and painting revealed that Hicks probably made a tracing of the elements he needed from the prints, inverted the tracing on his panel, and rubbed the paper until the soft graphite outline was transferred. He then reinforced the transferred image by drawing over these outlines, using the print sources as his guide. Infrared reflectography reveals this two-step procedure and X-radiography shows that Hicks adhered strictly to these lines as he painted - to the extent that he also followed the lines in the prints that describe folds and creases in the lambs' wool and the lines that define their hooves and heads. The bull, however, presented the artist with a challenge, since Cornell's animal obviously was not identical to the one in the Canton print. In this case, and for the fence posts, remaining animals, and vegetation, Hicks again made a complex underdrawing, but not from the prints, where these elements did not exist [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED]. He then strictly observed these lines when painting.