The Declaration of Independence

This is on oil on canvas painting. The viewer is given a slightly omniscient view of this scene, similar to actors on a stage. The characters are numerous and nearly without distinction. The heads are done isocephaly, with figure size as the only indication of background and foreground. The panels of the doors in the background are also unsymmetrical. Thomas Jefferson, having red hair and a dark blue suit with a red vest, is identified for the viewer as important: he is in the front of the stage and is the only one wearing red. Benjamin Franklin is on his left. The others move as the group to the front to sign the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.		Edward Hicks
American (1780-1849)
The Declaration of Independence, ca. 1840-45
Oil on canvas
Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch
American Art
Location:  Exhibit, Gallery 168
View Location
Dimensions:  H: 25 3/4 in, W: 29 1/4 in, SH: 26 in, SW: 29 1/2 in, FH: 33 1/2 in, FW: 30 in
Object ID: 76.53.1

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Edward Hicks
Attleborough, Pa. 1780-1849 Newtown, Pa.
\par\pard\ql Washington at the Delaware, c. 1849
Oil on canvas, 28 × 35 1/2 in. (71.1 × 90.2 cm)
Formerly inscribed on the reverse: Painted by Edw. Hicks in his 70th Yr.
References: Eleanore Price Mather and Dorothy Canning Miller, Edward Hicks, His Peaceable Kingdoms and Other Paintings, Newark, Del., 1983, p. 162, no. 69, and p. 166, no. 76; Carolyn J. Weekley, The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks, Williamsburg, 1999, I, pp. 156, 216, no. 107, and p. 214, no. 99.
\par\pard\ql The Declaration of Independence, 1776, c. 1840-45
Oil on canvas, 25 3/4 × 29 4/2 in. (65.4 × 74.3 cm)
Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 77.1271, 76.53.1, respectively

Edward Hicks is probably the best-known American folk painter from the first half of the nineteenth century. He was a native of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he worked primarily as an itinerant Quaker preacher and a painter of coaches and signs. Self-taught as an artist, Hicks also painted farm scenes, stirring patriotic images taken from colonial American history, and religious allegories that mirrored his Quaker pacifism. He commonly duplicated or varied compositions-notably, his famous Peaceable Kingdom-in scores of paintings.
Like many folk painters, Hicks often took inspiration from the prints or paintings of other artists. His Washington at the Delawarewas based on George S. Lang's engraving after Thomas Sully's well-known painting of 1819, Washington at the Passage of the Delaware(Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); his source for The Declaration of Independence, 1776, was Charles A. Goodrich's 1829 book The Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, which Hicks owned and which featured an engraved frontispiece made after John Trumbull's famous painting of the same theme.
Painted around 1849, the year of Hicks's death, the Chrysler's Washington at the Delawareis almost certainly the last of at least nine versions of this subject that Hicks produced over a twenty-five-year period (John A. Harney Collection, Trenton; Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg; and other collections). Two of these works (private collection; Mercer Museum, Doylestown, Pennsylvania) appear on commemorative wooden signboards that Hicks painted in 1833. Interestingly, they were hung at either side of the bridge spanning the Delaware River at the very spot crossed by Washington and some twenty-five hundred of his troops on Christmas night, 1776, en route to their victory over the British forces at Trenton. Washington's daring crossing helped boost American morale at the start of the Revolutionary War, and as Hicks's many versions of the subject indicate, the theme became a particularly popular one for nineteenth-century American painters (see object 83.589).
As a devout member of the Society of Friends, Hicks was well aware of the Quaker proscription against the "vanity" and "temptation" of "ornamental painting," and throughout his career he struggled to reconcile his artistic and religious convictions. The military subject of Washington at the Delawaremight be deemed especially curious in view of Hicks's pacifism, but he managed to justify his choice by describing Washington as an instrument of God:
. . . that distinguished instrument in the hand of the infinitely wise Jehovah . . . [who established] the American Republic, a system of government the most healthy and happy, the most successful and generous, now under heaven . . . and while virtue, liberty and independence continue to be esteemed among the children of men, the name of Washington will be pronounced with veneration and respect by millions of intelligent beings.
Though Washington did not take part in the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Hicks recognized that the general's military victories secured the freedoms proclaimed in that historic document in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. Indeed, Hicks directly linked the two subjects in 1836, when he painted versions of Washington at the Delawareand The Declaration of Independence on opposite sides of a wooden tavern sign. The Chrysler's Declaration of Independence, 1776-one of three versions by Hicks to survive-retains its original bird's-eye maple frame.
JCH
 

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