Arcadópolis
Peeling Onions
Lilly Martin Spencer, c. 1852
What you see
A woman in a purple dress sits at a table. With her right hand, still holding the knife, she rubs one eye; with her left she grips a half-peeled onion. On the left, peaches, apples and grapes pile up beside a copper pan, and on the right a brown-and-white game animal lies on a cloth with some carrots.
The near-black background makes her face, arms and the fruit stand out, lit from the left. The purple of the dress shimmers with bluish highlights. Don’t miss the onion rings and peelings on the table, the small glass bottle behind her hands, and her watery eye.
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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