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QUAKER PROFILES7 QUAKER PROFILES By Anna Cox Brinton THE CHARACTERISTIC "Portraiture of Quakerism," to use Thomas Clarkson's phrase, is a portraiture of words. Our Quaker journals form a unique gallery of self-portraits, and the obituaries painstakingly prepared by monthly meetings to be sent up to the quarterly or yearly gatherings add a long array of less complete but still striking delineations. Here inner or spiritual dimensions impress the mind while a pictured likeness tends to fix the eye upon exterior contours. In this brief prefatory paper I shall consider mainly American portraits. A few British antecedents are cited to make clear the connection between testimony and practice here and in England. Actual Quaker portraits by brush and pen offer a largely unworked field, of some interest and importance to the antiquarian . All told, there are more extant likenesses than might at first be supposed in view of the disciplinary insistence on plainness and avoidance of superfluities. In 1760 Franklin wrote in a letter to Lord Kames that "the primitive Quakers used to declare against pictures as a vain expense ; a man's suffering his portrait to be taken was conceived as pride and I think to this day it is very little practised among them." The same was true of other religious people. For example, William Law, the famous Anglican divine, author of the Serious Call, the most widely read religious book of its time, objected to having his likeness taken on grounds of humility. It is true that large and fashionable portraits were consistently discouraged by Friends, but drawings of the simpler and less formal sort, small canvasses and unpretentious engravings , were not infrequently made by professional artists as well as by amateurs, with the result that we can form a fairly clear impression of the features of some at least of the First Publishers of Truth. We know the general aspect of Fox, Naylor, and Penn, and of many of the worthies who came after them. Information is also to be gleaned from satirical representations. One of the best, if not the best, among American Quaker portraits of the early time is the painting of Anne Galloway by Hesselius, father or son, now in the American-Swedish Historical 8 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION Museum of Philadelphia. Thomas Story tells us in his famous journal that he visited Samuel Galloway's home at the Ridge in Maryland in 1699. There he rested for the night and was "very easy and well." Anne Galloway, the wife of Samuel, was "the only ministering Friend at that time in all those parts; a very honest, innocent, lively and honorable Friend in the Truth, and everywhere acceptable in her services." Hesselius' canvas is in complete agreement with Story's description. Because Friends never promoted the pictorial arts, the few among them who showed special gifts in this direction sought sponsors outside the Society. Benjamin West of Chester (now Delaware) County, Pennsylvania, and Patience Lovell Wright of Bordentown, New Jersey, both found patronage in London at the court of King George III and Queen Caroline. Edward Hicks, coach painter and minister of the gospel, remained at home and carried on his religious and temporal labors among Friends. He produced several quaint works. Best known among them is "The Peaceable Kingdom," in which the lion is shown lying down with the lamb while William Penn treats with the Indians in the background. Another of his pictures , now exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City with the caption "The Farm of David Twining in 1787," is strongly influenced by the profile style. Edward Hicks suffered severe compunctions because of his addiction to painting, "having been unsuccessful in every attempt to make an honest and honorable living by a more consistent business." He says: "My constitutional nature has presented formidable obstacles to the attainment of that truly desirable character, a consistent and exemplary member of the Society of Friends; one of which is an excessive fondness for painting, a trade to which I was brought up . . . and followed the greater part of my life." TN CONNECTION with the subject of portraits, it is worth¦*¦ noticing that the Quaker folios and...

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