Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch, 1826 - 1830
Oil on canvas, 23 1/2  x 30 3/4"
1969.2.3

Ironically, the first Americans to become interested in collecting folk art were modernists.  When the first major exhibition of folk art was organized in 1924 in New York City, works in the show were drawn from the collections of Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, and Yasuo Kuniyoshi.  As colleagues and students of the painter Hamilton Easter Field these avant garde thinkers saw a heroic simplicity in the work of artist such as Hicks.  They romanticized folk artists as leading the existential lives they themselves fancied.  In 1932 the Museum of Modern Art made this opinion official by staging the exhibition American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750-1900.  By the late 1960s, Hicks enjoyed a reputation that far outstripped the fame he achieved in his own lifetime.