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About Lilly M.Spencer
From Exeter, England, Lilly Martin Spencer moved with her progressive and intellectual parents to Marietta, Ohio at the age of eleven. She pursued an artistic education locally, moved to Cincinnati, exhibited some of her works, married and had a son all by 1845. Three years later three of her works appeared in the National Academy of Design’s spring exhibition. She would show works there through 1886. Spencer also became involved with the Western Art Union, the American Art-Union, the Brooklyn Art Association. She was able to produce around five hundred works in addition to caring for her thirteen children. Spencer’s husband worked full-time as her agent and promoter. Engravings of her work sold widely. The artist moved to Newark, New Jersey and bought a house at Highland, New York, across the Hudson River from Poughkeepsie (late 1879). In 1900, at the age of eight-eight, Spencer moved back to New York but died two years later. Her works are on view today in the Newark Museum, the Ohio Historical Society, the Brooklyn Museum, and in the Manoogian Collection.
Spencer specialized in paintings of single figures, children, and anecdotal scenes. Peeling Onions, ca. 1852; Private collection) is one of her most popular "sentimental" domestic scenes. She also ventured into literary themes, such as Hamlet and Ophelia, Isabella and Angelo (from Measure for Measure) and Lear and Cordelia. Two other works, Life without Hope and Reading the Legend demonstrate Spencer’s philosophical proclivities and her potential as a Romanticist. Her still-lifes are numerous -- art historian Martha Hutson calls her a "fine still-life painter" -- Cherries, Currants and Strawberries (all unlocated), were described as "exquisite" fruit pieces exhibited at the William Schaus Gallery on Broadway. Further examples include Fruit Piece, Dried Fruit, and Raspberries (all unlocated). Spencer’s flower pictures are extremely rare. Her only floral still-life listed in Bolton-Smith and Truettner’s catalogue of works of 1973 is Dahlias (unlocated), but she incorporated flowers in other works, such as Daisies Won’t Tell and The Flower Girl. Will You Have Some Fruit? (private collection), exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, is believed to be a posthumous portrait of one of Spencer’s own children. The cherry, when held in the hand of the Christ Child, symbolized the delights of the blessed, while the bird, perched in a cage with an open gate, would refer to the soul leaving the body at death. |
Paintings by Lilly M. Spencer
| Portrait of a Little Girl |
| oil on canvas: 43 x 31 inches |
| unsigned |
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