Record Details
Gift Drawing: The Tree of Light or Blazing Tree
Frame Dimension: 24 1/8 x 28 3/8 x 1 3/8 "
Recto: The Tree of Light or Blazing Tree/ The bright silver coulered light streaking from the edges of each green leaf resembles so/ Many torches. N.B.B I saw the whole tree as the angel held it before me as distinctly as I ever/ saw a natural tree. I felt very cautious about taking hold of the tree lest the blaze should/ touch my hand. Seen and received by Hannah Cohoon in the City of Peace Oct. 9th/ 10th h. A.M. 1845 drawn and painted by the same hand.
Verso: NB Be cautious and not lay warm hands/ on the paint as it is easy to cleave to the/ hand and take off little pieces of paint;/ sister/ Be so kind as to accept of this little/ token of my love and remeemberance/ Hannah Cohoon/ 60
Many communal societies have been established in the United States, but none survived as long or had as great an impact as the Shakers, or members of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing. The first Shakers left England for America in 1774, under the charismatic leadership of Mother Ann Lee (1736– 1784), whose adherents accepted her as Holy Mother Wisdom, the female aspect of the duality of God accepted by their faith. In this celibate society, each brother and sister enjoyed an unusual parity in authority, though daily activities might be assigned along typical gender lines. By the middle of the nineteenth century, nineteen principal Shaker communities had been founded from New England to Indiana, with more than five thousand members. Each community was a self-sufficient village, structured into smaller church families that replaced familial bonds from the outside world, and administrated work, worship, and daily life.
Receptiveness to vision and prophecy was fundamental to Shaker belief. The decision to escape persecution for their ecstatic practices in England and set forth to America was inspired in part by the vision received by James Whittaker (1751–1787), one of Mother Ann’s disciples, and later her successor. Whittaker related: "I saw a vision of America, and I saw a large tree, and every leaf thereof shone with such brightness, as made it appear like a burning torch, representing the Church of Christ, which will yet be established in this land."
Gift drawings postdate the period of Mother Ann’s leadership. They also were manifested at a time of growing doubt, as the first generation of leaders had died and the new generations had lost touch with the source of belief and inspiration. Beginning in 1837, an intense religious revival swept through the Shaker villages. Over a period of twenty or more years known as the Era of Manifestations, or Mother’s Work, visionary phenomena were received and recognized as "gifts" by the Shaker leadership and included messages, songs, dances, and drawings, sent by deceased Shaker elders, celestial beings, historical figures, and others. A little more than two hundred gift drawings survive, all but a few the work of women at the Shaker villages in New Lebanon, New York, and Hancock, Massachusetts. This is one of two nearly identical gift drawings of the Tree of Light by Hannah Cohoon, who was a twenty-nine-year-old mother of two young children when she joined the Shaker community in Hancock, Massachusetts, known as the City of Peace, in 1817. Cohoon was visited by an angel on the 9th of October, 1845, at ten in the morning. It is not known when she manifested this gift in paint on paper, but the number "60" on the reverse may indicate her age when she drew the Blazing Tree. She also indicates that it was intended as a gift for another, unidentified sister. Her physical experience of the vision is implicit in her fear that the blaze would burn her hands if she touched it.
Cohoon’s statement of prophetic and artistic authorship, unique among the Shaker instruments or visionists, indicates that she carefully drew the image in pencil before boldly painting it in heavily pigmented water-based colors suspended in gum Arabic, materials that would have been available for various domestic uses within the community. Based upon a 1992 conservation study that included A Bower of Mulberry Trees, drawn and painted by Cohoon, the border is painted in ultramarine and the dark green leaves are a combination of chrome yellow and Prussian blue with areas of a lighter shade of arsenic-based green. The leaves tremble with animated red lines vibrating around the edges. The composition gives an impression of symmetry and indeed the disposition of the leaves is largely bilateral, but the limbs branching off the main trunk are random as they would be in nature. In 1817, when Hannah Cohoon entered the City of Peace, the prevalent motif for needlework and quilt making would have been such a tree of life emerging from a hillock; her vision appeared in an iconography that she well understood. The imagery also recalls the biblical story of Moses and the Burning Bush, revealed by an angel of God who instructs Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and away from oppression. This narrative would have resonated during this period of disaffection within the Shaker body. The spirit guide moved Cohoon to record a glorious vision, the strong trunk representing the core of their faith, each branch and distinct shining leaf the flourishing of their word.
I am grateful to Emily Sylvia, librarian and archivist, Hancock Shaker Village, for sharing this study.
Stacy C. Hollander, "Gift Drawing: The Tree of Light or Blazing Tree, 1845" exhibition copy for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org
America was founded on an alternative model of government that permitted greater freedom of expression than had been possible in most of Europe. Utopian, perfectionist, and separatist experiments that were within but not of the main body were largely tolerated, if not welcomed. Vestiges of the transcendent nature of genius are retained in visionary images that were revealed to Shaker “instruments” by deceased Shaker leaders or sacred figures during a period of religious revival in Shaker history known as the Era of Manifestations or Mother’s Work.
This is one of two nearly identical gift drawings of the tree of light—or life—by Hannah Cohoon, who was a twenty-nine year-old mother of two children when she joined the Shaker community in Hancock, Massachusetts, in 1817. The motif would have been well known to Cohoon, as it was prominent in American quiltmaking, needlework, and watercolors beginning in the eighteenth century. The tree of life was also a source of inspirational imagery for the original Shakers who emigrated from England in 1774 under the charismatic leadership of Mother Ann Lee. Cohoon’s vision was delivered by an angel whom she saw “as distinctly as [she] ever saw a natural tree.” This spirit guide moved Cohoon to record a glorious and moral representation that was received by her as a gift and would serve as a gift to inspire others. And in a practical aside, so typical of the dual nature of Americans in every walk of life, Cohoon also cautions on the back of this drawing that the recipient not touch the paint as it might flake off in her hands.
Stacy C. Hollander, “Gift Drawing: The Tree of Light or Blazing Tree,” exhibition label for Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum. Stacy C. Hollander and Valérie Rousseau, curators. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2014.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org
