"The Painterly Voice: Buck's County's Fertile Ground," now on view at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Penn., is a major exhibition with more than 200 paintings by 50 artists drawn from over 35 sources, including private collectors and institutions.

Running through April 1, "The Painterly Voice" is by far the biggest show the Michener Museum has ever staged, spanning three large galleries and 25 sections, providing some artists the significance of a small solo exhibit. The works range from Edward Hicks' iconic "The Peaceable Kingdom," one of the most beloved images in the history of American art, on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to rarely seen gems from private collections.

Among the highlights are nine works by Pennsylvania Impressionist Edward Redfield, as well as signature paintings by Walter Baum, Daniel Garber, Fern Coppedge, and 1950s modernists including Charles Evans.

"The New Hope artists were an art colony year round," says Brian H. Peterson, the Michener's Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest Chief Curator. "They lived here, worked here, paid their taxes here, raised their children here, made many friends here and, most importantly, responded to the sense of place in their artwork."

What distinguishes Bucks County's painterly heritage is not any singular, recognizable style, but rather a diversity of "fingerprints" - genres, tools and techniques. It's this very diversity that is the most characteristic quality of Bucks County painting.

"But the word 'diversity' doesn't do justice to the depth and breadth of the story of the region's masters of canvas and brush," says Peterson. "It's the elusive but essential quality of individuality - what some call style or originality, but is better described by the more poetic term 'voice' - that the rich creative soil of Bucks County has most nurtured over the decades."

Harry Leith-Ross, poet of the ordinary; the wise silence of Daniel Garber; the nights and days of George Sotter; A tale of two (John) Folinsbees; the dancing trees of Fern Coppedge; the gritty cavalry charges and musket volleys of William T. Trego; the luminous landscapes and haunting still lifes of Martin Johnson Heade; are among the stories in The Painterly Voice.

Some Bucks County landscape painters took a different path. These artists were aware of the stylistic experimentation going on in Europe and New York, and decided to give it a try themselves. The artwork pushes the envelope in one way or another: sometimes it's color, sometimes it's the drawing style, sometimes it's the way paint is applied to the canvas. These artists were fascinated with symbols, with rhythm, with surface. Still others were more interested in man-made subject matter — machines, urban environments — over natural beauty.

Also on view is the work of artists undiscovered in their lifetime, yet highly regarded in today's art world, such as Morgan Colt, whose wrought iron work was more well known at his premature death than his paintings.

Works in The Painterly Voice are featured in a web-based publication.