The Residence of David Twining 1785.184626 1/8 x 29 3/4 "
Frame Dimension: 30 1/2 x 35 7/8 x 1 3/8 "Oil on canvas, in original wood frame with paint and gold leafGift of Ralph Esmerian2005.8.1301545353374P1.2001.060Edward HicksPaintingsThe American Folk Art Museum believes this work to be in the public domain.Inscribed on bottom of frame, gold letters stenciled with black shadow: THE RESIDENCE OF DAVID TWINING 1785.NewtownNewtownUnited StatesPennsylvaniaPaintingsNewtownScene of Twining farm with animals in pen LLS, door being opened by gentleman holding bucket, woman in chair nearby reading to young boy. Man with horse drawn plow behind LS, farmhouse RS with woman riding side saddle on red and white striped saddle blanket. Wood frame with gold painted liner and applied molding to finish edges; mitered corners/PAINTINGoil on canvasObject 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
Three years before his death, in his sixty-seventh year, Quaker artist Edward Hicks painted this rendition of the farmstead of David Twining. It is one of four such scenes that he made within the last decade of his life. It is possible that Hicks painted the property from life (the farmhouse is still standing), but the emotional resonance is that of a guileless five-year-old boy standing at the knee of his beloved adoptive mother—an elder’s self-reflection on how he came to be the man he was. In 1783, Hicks’s mother died, his father was impoverished, and the wealthy and kind Quaker Twining family offered to raise the child because Elizabeth Twining and Catherine Hicks had been fast friends. Hicks boarded with the Twinings for the next twelve years—years that were crucial in forming his character and his later devotion to the Quaker faith. In his memoir, Hicks remembers David Twining as "one of the most respectable, intelligent, and wealthy farmers in the county of Bucks." But it was Elizabeth whom Hicks credited as being "providentially appointed to adopt me as a son, and to be to me a delighted shepherdess, under the great Shepherd and Bishop of Souls." Stationed at the knee of this "woman of valor," the vignette recalls the words that he wrote in 1843: "How often have I stood, or sat by her, before I could read myself, and heard her read, particularly the 26th chapter of Matthew, which made the deepest impression on my mind. It was there that all the sympathy of my heart, all the finer feelings of my nature, were concentrated in love to my blessed Saviour."
When Hicks was thirteen, he was apprenticed to a coachmaker by his father. In 1811, he opened his own painting business. Having now embraced the Quaker faith, Hicks was soon discouraged by the Society of Friends from pursuing worldly topics in his easel art. Beginning between 1816 and 1818, he found expression instead in the theme of the Peaceable Kingdom described in Isaiah 11:6, a subject that gave visual representation to a core belief of the Quaker faith, denying one’s own base nature for the glory of God: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."
Hick’s innate nature was passionate. His anguish over rifts within the Society, which by 1827 had divided into two groups—the conservative Hicksites, named after Hicks’s elderly cousin Elias Hicks (1748–1830), and the Orthodox, who advocated formal structure in worship—and his distress over other changes were palpable in the sixty-two versions of the Peaceable Kingdom that he painted over more than three decades.
Stacy C. Hollander, "The Residence of David Twining 1785.," 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.orgP1.2001.06018461846 2005 8 13 Scene of Twining farm with animals in pen LLS, door being opened by gentleman holding bucket, woman in chair nearby reading to young boy. Man with horse drawn plow behind LS, farmhouse RS with woman riding side saddle on red and white striped saddle blanket. Wood frame with gold painted liner and applied molding to finish edges; mitered corners/PAINTINGoil on canvasObject 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
Three years before his death, in his sixty-seventh year, Quaker artist Edward Hicks painted this rendition of the farmstead of David Twining. It is one of four such scenes that he made within the last decade of his life. It is possible that Hicks painted the property from life (the farmhouse is still standing), but the emotional resonance is that of a guileless five-year-old boy standing at the knee of his beloved adoptive mother—an elder’s self-reflection on how he came to be the man he was. In 1783, Hicks’s mother died, his father was impoverished, and the wealthy and kind Quaker Twining family offered to raise the child because Elizabeth Twining and Catherine Hicks had been fast friends. Hicks boarded with the Twinings for the next twelve years—years that were crucial in forming his character and his later devotion to the Quaker faith. In his memoir, Hicks remembers David Twining as "one of the most respectable, intelligent, and wealthy farmers in the county of Bucks." But it was Elizabeth whom Hicks credited as being "providentially appointed to adopt me as a son, and to be to me a delighted shepherdess, under the great Shepherd and Bishop of Souls." Stationed at the knee of this "woman of valor," the vignette recalls the words that he wrote in 1843: "How often have I stood, or sat by her, before I could read myself, and heard her read, particularly the 26th chapter of Matthew, which made the deepest impression on my mind. It was there that all the sympathy of my heart, all the finer feelings of my nature, were concentrated in love to my blessed Saviour."
When Hicks was thirteen, he was apprenticed to a coachmaker by his father. In 1811, he opened his own painting business. Having now embraced the Quaker faith, Hicks was soon discouraged by the Society of Friends from pursuing worldly topics in his easel art. Beginning between 1816 and 1818, he found expression instead in the theme of the Peaceable Kingdom described in Isaiah 11:6, a subject that gave visual representation to a core belief of the Quaker faith, denying one’s own base nature for the glory of God: "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them."
Hick’s innate nature was passionate. His anguish over rifts within the Society, which by 1827 had divided into two groups—the conservative Hicksites, named after Hicks’s elderly cousin Elias Hicks (1748–1830), and the Orthodox, who advocated formal structure in worship—and his distress over other changes were palpable in the sixty-two versions of the Peaceable Kingdom that he painted over more than three decades.
Stacy C. Hollander, "The Residence of David Twining 1785.," 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