Conversation Piece By Lily Martin Spencer

763 Words2 Pages

Lily Martin Spencer was a female American genre painter in antebellum period, a time period in the United States before the civil war and after the War of 1812. This paper is on the analysis of Conversation Piece, an oil painting by Lilly Martin Spencer in 1851-52. The medium of the piece is oil on canvas and is now displayed in Gallery 758 of Metropolitan Museum of Art. Conversation Piece illustrates the sentimental culture in the United States by depicting the image of a middle-class domestic life. With elements of sentimentalism, the audiences are able to perceive the emotions within a pleasant family render by the painting. At the first glance of Conversation Piece, the image of a family of three relaxing near the dining table is shown. …show more content…

The dining room in the scene is decorated with the wallpaper screen, wooden floor, fireplace, Carcel lamp and sculpture. There is also a doll falls in the lower right corner. The doll that falls on the lower right corner may demonstrate the love of the parents to the baby; the buying of toys is equivalent to the showing of love, a sentimental element in a household. Moreover, the father wears a business-suit that is engraved with a gold chain and also wears a gold ring with red diamonds on his right pinky. The mothers wears a silk yellow-white hoop dress with pearl earrings. The foot of the mother is placed on a well-decorated red foot stool. These accesories suggest the wealth and affluence of the …show more content…

In the painting, Spencer depicts a domestic scene with warm atmosphere by using the color of red. The wallpaper screen, tablecloth, foot stool, and tassel are all painted in red color. By using red for the background of the painting, a sense of peace, vitality and power are emerged. In term of composition, the painting is small in composition with only a portion of the dining room shown, which give a sense of coziness. The feeling of harmony and coziness in the domestic household is in contrast with the cold atmosphere at work place outside the household. It is one reason why the sentimental arts became popular in American society during antebellum

Show More
Related

  • Visual Analysis Bouuerau

    546 Words  | 2 Pages

    Contextual Theory: This painting depicts a portrait of life during the late 1800’s. The women’s clothing and hair style represent that era. Gorgeous landscape and a leisurely moment are captured by the artist in this work of

    Read More

  • Jacob Lawrence’s Direct and Dramatic Paintings

    817 Words  | 2 Pages

    After reviewing Jacob Lawrence’s direct and dramatic paintings, it was clear that his painting helped him express himself. The painting was and still is a product of the economic and cultural self-determination that African-American dealt in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, during the migration and still evident in society today. The visual qualities in Jacob Lawrence artwork that is appealing are the vibrant colors and his clever way of self-expressing the time he was so familiar. In final analysis, his artwork expressed how he felt about his environment and what his perspective were during that time. And, how restrained his painting were, for instance, Street Scene – Restaurant, even though African- Americans had access to restaurants in the neighboring area but, he still place patriot outside the restaurant waiti...

    Read More

  • Family Of Country People By Louis Le Nain

    637 Words  | 2 Pages

    The work depicts a family in plain clothing enclosed in a simple solitary room with a fading fire amidst the dark shadows of the background and another light source that extends from beyond the scope of the canvas. At first glance the influences of Caravaggio and Rembrandt are apparent. Their faces are neither, sad, sullen, angry, or joyful, but rather their emotional expression is plain and uncomplicated, adding a sense of timelessness to the painting. As in the description (20-34) of the piece which states; “It reflects 17th Century social theory, which celebrated the natural virtue of those that worked the soil”, (p. 609). The idea of portraying a classic simple lifestyle is a refreshing one and a concept which will reoccur in other works of the Baroque period.

    Read More

  • The Work of Archibald Motley

    675 Words  | 2 Pages

    While visiting the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the works of Archibald Motley caught my attention. Two paintings by the same artist are the focus of this compare and contrast paper. Both are oil paintings during the same time period. Portrait of my Grandmother was painted in 1922 and Hot Rhythm was painted in 1934 only 12 years later. Although the paintings are by the same artist and have similarities, there are also differences which make the artist’s work interesting. Portrait of My Grandmother and Hot Rhythm are two paintings by Motley that capture different emotions (aspects would be a better word) of African Americans.

    Read More

  • Paul Delaroche's Portrayal Of Women In The 19th Century

    909 Words  | 2 Pages

    The painting depicts a mother and her four children, who are all leaning on her as she looks down solemnly, her tired, despondent expression suggests she felt trapped in her roles as being a mother and a wife. The woman and her children are clearly the focal point of the artwork as the bright colours used to paint them stand out impeccably against the dull, lifeless colours of the background. This painting appears to be centred around the ideology that women are home-keepers, whose main role is to satisfy and assist her husband while simultaneously minding the children and keeping the home tidy and ready for his return. The social consequences of this artwork could have been that the woman could have been berated for not taking pleasure out of being a mother and raising her children, as a woman should. She could have been made redundant as her husband may have felt as though she is no longer useful if she couldn’t adequately adhere to her roles as a mother and a

    Read More

  • Character Analysis Of Edith Wharton's House Of Mirth

    1378 Words  | 3 Pages

    This anxiety is at the heart of Lily’s conflict with her society. The choice of the |Mrs. Lloyd” painting also hearkens to this theme. Reynolds made the choice to depict his subject wrapped in the cloths of antiquity. In his epoch, at the late 18th century, the neoclassical genre was in its heyday and just as the New Yorkers of the Gilded Age looked to Europe for cultural esteem, so too were the neoclassicist looking backwards, but to ancient Rome and Greece. The anxiety of influence in the scene from the novel is thus tripled upon itself so that the reader experiences it as the influence of Rome, on Europe, on New York, and finally on Lily. As the tip of this inverted pyramid, Lily must perform a fine balancing act and be representative of the natural beauty of classical forms, the elegance and refinement of aristocratic Europe, and the culmination of both in the great American experiment. She literally represents herself as all of these facets in the tableaux vivants, and as such achieves a sense of “eternal harmony” that Selden notes in her in that

    Read More

  • The House Of Mirth And The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis

    1775 Words  | 4 Pages

    The life of a lady in the 19th century is painted in a romantic light. Pictured in her parlor, the lady sips tea from delicate china while writing letters with a white feathered quill. Her maid stands silently off in the background, waiting for orders to serve her mistress. What is not typically pictured, is the sadness or boredom echoed on the lady’s face. Perhaps the letter is to a dear friend, not seen in ages, pleading with the friend to visit, in hopes that the friend will fill the void in the lady’s life made from years spent in a loveless marriage. Possibly the lady isn’t writing a

    Read More

  • Five Women Wearing The Same Dress

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    The set design in the play “Five Women Wearing the Same Dress” was one pinky bed, one white dresser, two doors, a CD player, jewelry box on a white shelf and there is a window between a door and a bed. Because of the room is girl’s room color was used pink, white and light purple. In addition, a Blanket pattern of the bed was drawn pink flowers, a curtain of the window was used lace and most of the furniture were used antique, these shows femininity. But the room has the poster

    Read More

  • A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

    1183 Words  | 3 Pages

    A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, located in the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of the most recognizable paintings of the 19th century, a painting made by Frenchman Georges Seurat. Finished in 1886, it has gained much of its recognition over the time of its completion; the pop culture of today has played a pivotal role into the popularity of it. An example of that is being apart in one of the most recognizable scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where one of the main characters is solely staring at the painting until he can’t even recognize the artwork. This painting also gets much attention because it was an early example of the style of pointillism, at the time; pointillism was becoming a new way of expressing one self with the new technique. It also brought upon about the way we saw paintings, and what we gained from the artwork as whole. In all this painting has become an icon in the art scene, due to the technique it used, and how much of an impact it has had in today culture.

    Read More

  • Lily Dialectical Journal

    1443 Words  | 3 Pages

    “That night I lay in bed and thought about dying and going to be with my mother in paradise. I would meet her saying, “Mother, forgive. Please forgive,” and she would kiss my skin till it grew chapped and tell me I was not to blame.”

    Read More

  • Comparison of Painting of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    On Saturday, March 15, 2014, I visited the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The gallery #753, which is a part of so-called American Wing, features oil paintings of the revolutionary period in America. The paintings seen in this gallery celebrate heroes and hard-fought battles of the new nation. The most popular type of painting of that time remained portraiture. Portraits in extremely large numbers figured in interiors, where they were arranged to convey not only domestic, but political messages as well. Hence, it is natural, that such iconic figure like George Washington became a model for numerous artists of that era, including Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale, for whom Washington actually sat. Two exceptional portraits of Washington, the general and the the first President of the United States are highlighted in this paper.

    Read More

  • Frederic Edwin Church's Contribution to Defining America

    2028 Words  | 5 Pages

    This essay will also compare the work of Thomas Moran, another Hudson River School artist working with the same subject matter, and will attempt to clarify the artist’s similarities and differences in regard to both technique and contributions. The work of Winslow Homer, a contemporary of Church, will be briefly discussed in relation to the impact the Civil War had on subject matter in relationship to nati...

    Read More

  • Discuss Priestley's depiction of the Birling household and Gerald

    3174 Words  | 7 Pages

    The furniture represents the Birling families longing for status. In the early 1900s social status was virtually everything. This was because socialism dominated the whole of the United Kingdom. The vertical social ladder of status was what controlled who was a "somebody" and who was a "nobody".

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Cassatt's The Child And Mother Nursing Her Child

    1035 Words  | 3 Pages

    Aristotle once claimed that, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Artists, such as Louise-Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun and Mary Cassatt, captured not only the way things physically appeared on the outside, but also the emotions that were transpiring on the inside. A part no always visible to the viewer. While both artists, Le Brun and Cassatt, worked within the perimeters of their artistic cultures --the 18th century in which female artists were excluded and the 19th century, in which women were artistically limited-- they were able to capture the loving relationship between mother and child, but in works such as Marie Antoinette and Her Children and Mother Nursing her Child 1898,

    Read More

  • Color as Metaphor in Film What Dreams May Come

    1341 Words  | 3 Pages

    Looking at landscape art, especially when painted by one of the masters, many have undoubtedly pondered: what would it be like to live there? Shapes and attention to detail are, of course, important in a painting. However, it is color that draws the eye and inspires the heart. Oscar Wilde, an Irish poet and dramatist, spoke well of this when he noted that, “Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways. (qtd in “color”)”. Vincent Ward had a similar understanding of this impact when, in 1998, he directed the movie What Dreams May Come. Looking at this film, one can easily imagine being inside a living painting. The use of color to emphasize the emotional state of a character or event is common in films; nevertheless, Director Ward goes even farther in using color to represent the actual characters themselves. Red is the shade chosen to signify Annie and likewise, blue is used for Chris. Both of these, as will be shown, are accurate in defining these fictitious people. However, it is the profound use of purple in this film that is the true focal point. When mixing red and blue paint, one would find that, after being mixed, they cannot be separated. Likewise, this is true of the life and love these characters build and share. Purple represents the many ways in which Chris and Annie are melded, and joined.

    Read More

More about Conversation Piece By Lily Martin Spencer

Open Document