My short blog today is about n artist and a religion. It looks at the life and works of Hannah Cohoon, a person you may not have heard of before. Her art is both unusual and simplistic and is connected to a millenarian restorationist Christian sect known as The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, but more commonly referred to as the Shakers. The group grew out of a branch of Quakerism around 1747 in Northwest England and later, the visionary Ann Lee (Mother Ann) brought Shakerism to America in the 1780s.
Shaker workshop service showing worshippers on benches and marching in a spiral.
The Shakers were so-called because of their practices of shaking, dancing, whirling, and speaking, shouting, and singing in tongues.
Hancock Shaker Village
Round Stone Barn and Fields
Hannah Harrison Cohoon was an American painter born in Williamstown, Massachusetts on February 1st 1788 and later became a member of Hancock Shaker Village. Although there are only sketchy details of Hannah’s education it is thought that she would have been instructed in watercolour painting and probably would have learned needlework skills from her elders as it was a skill, like painting that was considered an essential ability that every young woman should possess Hannah, now married, and known as Hannah Cohoon was twenty-nine-years-old and the mother of two young children. Her son Harrison was born in 1812 and her daughter Mariah was born in 1814. It was on March 15th 1817 that the twenty-nine-year-old Hannah entered the Hancock Shaker Village community situated just outside Hancock and Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In the main, the Hancock Shakers supported themselves through farming. The grew and cultivated flowers and plants and from them sold garden seeds. Over time they purchased more land and by the 1830s the Hancock Shakers owned about 3,000 acres (12 km2).
Tree of Light or Blazing Tree by Hannah Cohoon (1845)
The leading artists at the time who worked at Hancock were Joseph Wicker, Hannah Cohoon, and Polly Collins and all chose to depict images which were derived from nature, especially trees. For the Shakers, the Tree of Life was an immediately identifiable symbol, celebrated in sermons, gift songs, and in their early history as a representation of the unity of the Shaker Church.
Tree of Life by Hannah Cohoon (1854). Ink and tempera on paper. Courtesy of Andrews Collection, Hancock Shaker Village.
When we look at Cohoon’s wonderful single-image paintings of trees we realise that her expertise in embroidery, the ornamental needlework of appliqué, and her knowledge of quilting techniques were all present in her mind when she painted. It was during a summer day in 1854, that Hannah Cohoon, who had been a member of the Shaker community in Hancock for thirty-seven years, had a vision of a singular and curious tree. She saw plainly the branches, leaves and fruit, and she sketched and painted them on a sheet of white paper. One of the Shaker elders saw what she had done and told her that the name of the tree was the Tree of Life. Cohoon described how the vision came to her to create the Tree of Life drawing:
“…I received a draft of a beautiful Tree pencil’d on large sheet of plain white paper bearing ripe fruit. I saw it plainly, it looked very singular and curious to me. I have since learned that this Tree grows in the Spirit Land. Afterwards the Spirit showed me plainly the branches, leaves and fruit, painted or drawn upon paper. The leaves were check’d or cross’d and the same colours you see here. I entreated Mother Ann to tell me the name of this tree which she did on Oct. 1st 4th hour P.M. by moving the hand of a medium to write twice over Your Tree is the Tree of Life…”
A Bower of Mulberry Tree by Hannah Cohoon. (1854). Ink and tempera on paper. Courtesy of Andrews Collection, Hancock Shaker Village.
A Bower of Mulberry Trees by Hannah Cohoon (1854)
The main feature of Hannah’s painting entitled A Bower of Mulberry Trees is dominated by the curving branches of trees that form an arch over a long Shaker table which is set out for a feast. It came from her vision of Shaker elders feasting on cakes under mulberry trees which were held at biennial meetings,. The doves represent the bounties that the believer would experience in heaven, and the table depicts holy feasts which were held biennially.
A Little Basket Full of Beautiful Apples by Hannah Cohoon (1856) Art Work by Hannah Cohoon / Courtesy the Hancock Shaker Village Collection / American Folk Art Museum.
Hannah also completed A Little Basket Full of Beautiful Apples in 1856. In his article for the New Yorker journal, Adam Gopnik, a long-time staff writer for the paper, wrote:
“...Shining Tree of Life is among the key drawings in American art, with a tonic sense of abundance—all the apples just alike, each with its rub-on of rouge, like blush applied by an adolescent girl—allied to obsessive order…”
Hannah Harrison Cohoon died in Hancock, Massachusetts, on January 7th, 1864, aged 75 and is buried in the family cemetery of the Church.
An image of Cohoon’s Tree of Life appeared in a December 1945 Antiques magazine article by Edward Deming Andrews. Andrews used the image for the covers of his books, Visions of Heavenly Sphere and Fruits of the Shaker Tree of Life in 1969 and 1975.
The Hancock Shaker Village became a museum in 1960, and sometime after that the Andrews sold Cohoon’s drawings and other gift drawings to the museum. Andrews also organized an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1935.
Her Tree of Life drawing was used in 1974 for a UNICEF Christmas postcard to raise funds for the organization. In 1980, the Whitney Museum of Art held another exhibition, “American Folk Painters of Three Centuries, which featured four of Cohoon’s drawings.
