The Peaceable Kingdom

Lions lie down with lambs, leopards with kids, and a little child reaches among them, while in the background William Penn signs his peace treaty with the Indians beneath the trees. Edward Hicks, a Quaker preacher and sign-painter, drew on Isaiah's prophecy of a world without violence, and he returned to the theme some sixty times. Now in Washington, the Peaceable Kingdom is the masterpiece of American folk painting - earnest, flat, and tender, a pacifist vision of harmony among creatures and peoples rendered with the directness of an untrained but deeply sincere hand.