In New York Art Tours’ final selection from the Met Museum’s American galleries this week, this painting by Edward Hicks, Pennsylvania Quaker preacher, trained sign painter and one of the U.S.’s best known folk artists, celebrates independence while encouraging unity. The message, ‘In unity there is strength’ appears in an arc against the back wall in a departure from John Trumbull’s famous, earlier painting after which Hicks modeled his composition. Painted in 1844, the year of a presidential election that divided the country over issues of expansionism and the annexation of Texas, this painting recalls the act of solidarity that began the nation’s history. (On view in gallery 731 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art).
