Penn's Treaty with the Indians

Hicks's Penn's Treaty with the Indians, painted around 1840-1844, depicts the legendary 1682 meeting between William Penn and the Lenape people, based on Benjamin West's famous 1772 painting. As a devout Quaker, Hicks saw Penn's peaceful treaty as a model of the harmonious relations between peoples that he longed to see realized. He painted multiple versions of this subject, which complemented his many Peaceable Kingdom paintings in expressing his vision of peace and justice.

Hicks's folk painting technique renders the historical scene with decorative clarity, arranging figures in a frieze-like composition derived from West's original. The flat, even coloring and simplified forms give the scene a tapestry-like quality that emphasizes its moral and historical significance.