On Tuesday the weather turned cold and rainy, a perfect art museum day! Normally such a day inspires horror, but we were engaged by a docent in the morning who introduced us to Edward Hicks, the peaceable kingdom artist, and the “Down on the Farm” sticker book series, starring Prince, the dog, all of which appealed to my low-brow taste.

The charming Prince was created by a local artist to frame a folk art exhibit, which features many weather vane and attractive metal farm animals, and he became a local hero in his own right. The gift shop contains a barrel of stuffed replicas of Prince, and the book is now sold out of print. 

Prince’s adventures include both a diverse assortment of barn yard animals and some local travel on the rails to incorporate as many folk art exhibits as possible, scattered around one of several rooms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mixed with the illustrations are three recognizable Edward Hicks paintings, if you remember the rather flat, dreamlike farm animals surrounded by more ferocious lions and wolves in his “Peaceable Kingdom.” Below are two similarly-themed examples. The barnyard landscape below on the right includes human and animal figures painted with a transparency that allows you to see the fence through their gauzy bodies, as if to emphasize their ethereal existence. The dominant rosy sky adds to the heavenly setting.

George Mason made an appearance in the art museum’s auditorium to reminisce about the colonial resistance before the Revolutionary War. “Mason prepared the first draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, and his words formed much of the text adopted by the final Revolutionary Virginia Convention” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mason. The text became the foundation for the eventual Bill of Rights, appended to the U.S. Constitution.  George was a bit infirm and traveled outside of the state only once– to attend the Constitutional Convention, where he refused to sign the draft that excluded the Bill of Rights.

Charles Wilson Peale’s famous portrait of Washington at the Battle of Princeton highlights a roomful of colonial portraits. The painting foreshadows a string of victories for General Washington after surviving the brutal winter of Valley Forge. Symbols of conquest surround Washington, including the fallen Union Jack behind his feet at the left. Quite a different Washington than the French and Indian War Colonel, frustrated by the poor provisions and ragged uniforms of his 300 troops in the campaign in the frontier of Virginia in the 1750’s.

The day climaxed with our grand dinner at Christiana Campbell’s Inn across from the Capitol followed by a concert at the Bruton Episcopal Church–a  Handel harpsichord suite, a Bach organ piece and a baritone rendition of Ralph Vaughn Williams’ setting of three of George Herbert’s poems. A spectacular feast of seafood and the arts for a chilling rainy day when the midwest was bombed with an untimely snowstorm.