Hannah Cohoon

Her works have become iconic of Shaker religious expression. She died in 1864 and was buried in the cemetery of the Hancock Church Family.

• Name — Hannah Cohoon • Birth Name — Hannah Harrison • Born — 1 February 1788 • Birthplace — Williamstown, Massachusetts • Died — 7 January 1864 • Place of death — Hancock, Massachusetts • Known for — Painting • Movement — Shaker • Notable Works — The Tree of Life • Illustration — Hancock Shaker Village, Massachusetts • Illustration — Unknown artist, Shaker gift drawing, mid-19th century • Illustration — Hannah Cohoon, Tree of Life or Blazing Tree, 1845 • Illustration — Hannah Cohoon, A Bower of Mulberry Trees, 1854 • Illustration — Hannah Cohoon, The Tree of Life, 1854 • Illustration — Hannah Cohoon, A Little Basket Full of Beautiful Apples, 1856

Cohoon became a member of the Hancock Shaker Village and made "gift drawings" that recounted spiritual visitations received during the Era of Manifestations encountered by Shakers in the mid-19th century. Uncommonly for Shaker gift drawings, she signed her drawings, so that the works have been attributed to her. Cohoon had a unique style that was more abstract, simple and personal. She used impasto techniques to create texture within the drawings.

Hannah Harrison was one of three girls born to Noah B. Harrison (1759–1789) and Huldah Bacon Harrison (1763–1809). She was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, on February 1, 1788. Noah Harrison had been an 18-year-old drummer boy during the Revolutionary War in June and July 1777. In 1780 he was a private for a Berkshire, Massachusetts, company during the war. He died the year after Hannah was born. Hannah's sisters were Lois and Polly, born respectively in 1784 and 1785. Hannah had a son named Harrison and a daughter named Mariah. She became a member of the Hancock Shaker community on March 15, 1817, when she was 29, Harrison was 5 and Mariah was 3 years of age. She signed the covenant there in 1823. In 1843 she signed the Sacred Roll. Her surname for the works of art in the mid-1800s was Cohoon.

A period called the Era of Manifestations between 1837 and the 1850s represented a major spiritual shift within the Shaker community where "believers" regularly received spiritual visions which were revealed in song, drawings and dances. The people who received the visions were called "instruments". Spiritual Spectacles: Vision and Image in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Shakerism. The profound experience resulted in Shakers expressing the "gifts" received from Spirit in drawings, messages and songs. Of about 200 surviving gift drawings, most were made by women who lived in Hancock Shaker Village, Massachusetts, or Lebanon, New York. One example is Gift Drawing: A Reward of True Faithfulness from Mother Lucy to Eleanor Potter by Polly Ann (Jane) Reed (1818-1881). Called "gift drawings", the works were based upon wondrous messages that they received during Spiritual visitations. They were made with "painstaking precision" using watercolors or transparent inks. They generally included many small emblems, considered "wildly extravagant by Shaker standards," such as treasure chests, heavenly mansions, golden chariots, flowers and fruits. and included written messages of friendship or reverence, with calligraphic intricacies, resembling fine lacework. Generally, works would not be signed by the artist. Key artists from the Shaker community were Cohoon, Polly Collins and Joseph Wicker. The Era of Manifestations ended when Shaker community members became embarrassed by the "emotional excesses and mystical expressions of this period."

Cohoon began creating her drawings and art in the year of 1845. She adopted a unique approach for her drawings as compared to other Shaker works. She used thick paint in primary or secondary colors that created an impasto texture, using bold, expressive brushstrokes. Her compositions were dedicated to a single object or scene with geometric patterns. Rather than messages intended for others, she wrote directly of visionary experiences, and she signed her works. Cohoon is primarily known for her spirit drawings with trees: • The Tree of Life or Blazing Tree, 1845 • The Tree of Life, 1854 • A Bower of Mulberry Trees, 1854, was made as a result of Cohoon's vision of a feast of cakes by Shaker elders under mulberry trees. The depiction of the long table in the drawing represents holy feasts held in biennial meetings, and the presence of the doves overhead represents the bounties that the believer would experience in heaven. Germaine Greer, author of The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work, likened Cohoon's drawing to primitive art by Catholic artists of "an earthly paradise with trees in flower and fruit." A "leading figure in the era of spirit manifestations", Joseph Wicker (1789–1852), an elder in the Shaker community, created a gift drawing of a tree in 1844 which may have been inspiration of Hannah's pictures of trees. Cohoon described how the vision came to her to create the Tree of Life drawing: The tree of life has become an icon to represent Shakers. In 1996 another painting attributed to Cohoon was estimated prior to sale at Sotheby's of $250,000 to $350,000. The painting, somewhat similar to and having the same name as Tree of Light or Blazing Tree, is estimated at seven times the record amount for a Shaker drawing. It sold at Sotheby's for $299,500 to the Museum of American Folk Art in January 1997. She also made A Little Basket Full of Beautiful Apples in 1856. Adam Gopnik wrote in his article "Shining Tree of Life" for The New Yorker that the drawing 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." Cohoon is best known as a creator of gift drawings, particularly for The Tree of Life. She is mostly known for her paintings, but she also composed music.