
Domestic Happiness
Lilly Martin Spencer, 1849
What you see
A man and a woman lean together over a bed where two small children are sleeping. He wears a floral dressing gown, smiles, and raises a hand as if asking for quiet; she, with curly blond hair, presses a hand to her chest and gazes down tenderly. Below, the older child rests on a pillow, and the youngest, in a light little shift, sleeps alongside.
A red curtain closes off the background, and light falls from the left on the sheets and the children's skin. Her pink and green and his patterned gown frame the bed. Spot the father's hand resting on the pillow, and the patterned gold fabric in the lower left corner.
About Lilly Martin Spencer
Lilly Martin Spencer was born in England in 1822, grew up on a farm in Ohio and became one of the most popular and widely reproduced women painters in mid-nineteenth-century America. Her lively, often humorous scenes of family life, which sometimes poked fun at husbands, were sold widely as lithographs. Unusually for her time, she was the family breadwinner while her husband ran the household, and she kept painting until her death at nearly eighty.
More by Lilly Martin Spencer
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