  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.
  
  
  Title
  Domestic Happiness
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1849
  
  Artist
  Lilly Martin Spencer
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1822-1902
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  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)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Bequest of Dr. and Mrs. James Cleland, Jr.
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  34.274
  
  
  Copyright
  Public Domain
