Arcadópolis
Don't Wake Them
Lilly Martin Spencer, 1848–1849
What you see
A curly-haired man and a long-haired woman lean together over a cradle where two children sleep cheek to cheek. He raises an open hand as if asking for quiet and rests the other on the cradle's edge; she lays a hand on her chest. Below, the title is written in English in a looping script.
The faces and hands are finely shaded, while the cradle and the lower part are only lightly sketched in loose lines. The paper has brown spots and a faintly bluish tone. Look at the adults' smiles, made with very few strokes, and the tassel hanging from the cradle.
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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