About the Artwork
The children are fast asleep. Wearing thin white bed clothes and lying on immaculate white sheets, the light-haired children are the picture of innocence and purity. Dressed for bed, their parents have stepped into the nursery to make sure they are safe. Bending over them and gently smiling, they seem to be thinking, “aren’t they wonderful.”
Lilly Martin Spencer was the most successful and influential American woman painter active in the United States before Mary Cassatt. Spencer and her husband had 17 children, seven of whom reached adulthood. The man in the painting is modeled on her husband, the children on their two oldest sons. Spencer was the primary breadwinner in the family, and many of her best paintings poke fun at husbands. Notice how the woman pushes gently against her spouse’s chest, as if to say, as the subtitle has it, “Hush, Don’t Wake Them,” adding a touch of humor to this idealizing portrait of a happy family.
Domestic Happiness
1849
Lilly Martin Spencer
1822-1902
American
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Oil on canvas
Unframed: 55 1/4 × 45 3/4 inches (140.3 × 116.2 cm) Framed: 72 × 57 1/4 × 4 inches (182.9 × 145.4 × 10.2 cm)
Paintings
American Art before 1950
Bequest of Dr. and Mrs. James Cleland, Jr.
34.274
Public Domain
Markings
Inscribed, on verso: Lilly M. Spencer | Painter 1849
Old label on stretcher, upper corner: Detroit | Art Loan Association | F. Brady | No. 22 On stretcher, upper left: Property of | W. H. Brady Stencil, on verso: PREPARED BY | THEO. KELLEY | ... | NEW YORK
Provenance
Philadelphia Art UnionWestern Art Union (Cincinnati, Ohio, USA)
Captain Waterman
Samuel Preston Brady (1809-1868)
Elizabeth Mary (Nexsen) Brady (1813-1888). Wife of the above.
Dr. and Mrs. James Cleland, Jr.
1934-present, bequest to the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
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Provenance pageExhibition History
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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.
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“Catalogue of Paintings, now on exhibition in our free Gallery. Prices, including Frames.” Philadelphia Art Union Reporter 1, no. 1-3 (January-April 1851).
Hadry, Henriette A. “Mrs. Lilly M. Spencer.” Sartain’s Union Magazine 9 (August 1851): pp. 152-154.
Catalogue of Articles on exhibition at the Gallery of Fine Arts, in the Firemen’s Hall, February 1853. Exh. cat. Duncklee & Wales, Book and Job print, Detroit, 1853.
“The Fine Art Gallery.” The Broken Fetter, Published during the Ladies’ Michigan State Fair, for the Relief and Destitute Freedmen and Refugees,” February 28, 1865, p. 5.
Catalogue, Second Exhibition and Constitution and By-laws of the Detroit Art Association. Exh. cat., Detroit Art Association. Gulley’s Steam Press, Detroit, 1875-76.
Detroit Art Loan Exhibition. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1883, p. 65, no. 670.
National Academy of Design Exhibition Record 1826-1860. Exh. cat., New-York Historical Society. New York, 1943, p. 134.
Lilly Martin Spencer 1822-1902: The Joys of Sentiment. Exh. cat., National Collection of Fine Arts. Washington, D.C., 1973, p. 31, no. 133.
Lubin, David M. Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America. New Haven, CT, 1994, pp. 162-169.
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Credit Line for Reproduction
This work is in the public domain.
Lilly Martin Spencer, Domestic Happiness, 1849, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Bequest of Dr. and Mrs. James Cleland, Jr., 34.274.
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