Newtown Quaker Young Adults Receive Hicks' "Peaceable Kingdoms"

From left to right, Aaron Haber, Gabe Moon, Katie Hulihan, Sara Blumberg, Emily Heacock, Lorraine Muth, Emily Rucker, Jake Lynch. Recipients not pictured: Max Klaver, Lauren Silverman, Emma Sio.

Newtown Quaker Young Adults Receive Hicks Peaceable Kingdom Prints

Eleven young adults of the Newtown Quaker Meeting community who turned 21 during 2018 were recently recognized by the Meeting at the historic Friends Meetinghouse with prints of Newtown Meeting co-founder Edward Hicks’ Peaceable Kingdom. (www.newtownfriendsmeeting.org)

It is traditional that each young person in the meeting community at age twenty-one receives a framed replica of one of Edward Hicks paintings of The Peaceable Kingdom inscribed “in recognition of your being a part of our own ‘peaceable kingdom’ and in celebration of your attaining your majority as an adult member of the Newtown Friends Meeting community.”

Similar copies of this painting have been presented by members of Newtown Quaker Meeting to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, to Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, Vanguard Funds Founder John C. Bogle, and to Quaker leaders throughout the country.

The reproductions of The Peaceable Kingdom are courtesy of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia.

The young adults who received their Hicks paintings this year are: Sara Blumberg (Lock Haven University), Aaron Haber (Bucks County Community College), Emily Heacock (Northeastern University), Katie Hulihan (Bryn Mawr), Max Klaver (Tufts University), Jake Lynch (Temple University), Gabe Moon (Haverford College), Lorraine Muth (Colgate University), Emily Rucker (Barnard College), Lauren Silverman (Elon University), and Emma Sio (Warren Wilson College).

Edward Hicks was co-founder of Newtown Friends Meeting in 1815. During his lifetime, he was known primarily as a Quaker minister, and painted coaches, signs and “ornamentals” for a modest living.

Hicks traveled throughout the area and sometimes gave one of his more-than sixty versions of The Peaceable Kingdom to Friends who provided hospitality for him during his travels. The paintings are based on the Old Testament prophecy that in God’s peaceable kingdom, the lion shall lie down with the lamb and a little child will lead all creatures. In the background of the painting is the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, arranging a treaty with Native Americans.

Hicks paintings now hang in leading museums throughout the country and are highly valued. Many replicas of his Bucks County farmscapes, paintings of historic occasions of The Signing of the Declaration of Independence, and General George Washington on his horse, as well as versions of his Peaceable Kingdom are exhibited in the Newtown Meetinghouse Gathering Room. Edward Hicks’ home, a Newtown historic site, is on Center Street, and his modest grave is in the burying ground at Newtown Friends Meeting, another Newtown historic site.

Newtown Friends Meeting gives Bibles to children in the Meeting at age twelve and copies of the Quaker “Faith and Practice” guidebook to young people at age sixteen.

Newtown Friends Meeting is open to the public for First Day School with classes for children and adults at 9:45 a.m. and worship “after the manner of Friends” at 11 a.m. Childcare is provided.