Sanford Schwartz explores the trailblazing career of 19thcentury Quaker folk artist Edward HicksEdward Hicks 17801849 was the creator of one of the most familiar scenes in American art the Peaceable Kingdom which depicts a realm where wild and flesheating animals come together with defenseless creatures and will not harm them. Because Hicks was a Quaker minister his many renderings of the scene have been taken as largely a selftaught artists professions of Quaker pacifism.But here author and curator Sanford Schwartz in a wideranging study that for the first time looks at Hicks as an imaginative artist as well as a minister shows how the Peaceable Kingdom paintingsthere are some 60 examples made over 30 yearstell a richer story. In Schwartzs hands Hicks emerges as a person and a painter who hardly seems to be of the past.