(light jazz music)
- [Beth] We're here in the galleries
of the Art Institute of Chicago
looking at a painting by Lilly Martin Spencer.
Now, although we're the Art Institute Chicago,
this particular painting happens to be in the collection
of the Terra Foundation for American Art.
And the painting is called
The Home of the Red, White, and Blue.
This is much more than a simple genre painting.
- [Taylor] This painting rife with symbolism.
At the very bottom we can see an American flag
that's literally ripped in two.
This painting was done between 1867 and 1868,
mere years after the Civil War ended.
You can see the red and the white stripes
bunch together on the ground
and then the blue with the stars
is sitting on a little bench.
- [Beth] And surrounding that is whole host of figures,
but our eye is drawn primarily to the female figures here.
- [Taylor] Our eyes are immediately drawn
to the woman in the center.
She's bathed in this beautiful golden light.
That's a self-portrait of the artist Lilly Martin Spencer
and she's surrounded by two of her children
and the fact that she is dressed in white
and her older daughter is dressed in red
and her younger daughter is dressed in blue
is another aspect of the symbolic nature of his painting
and a statement that she's trying to make
about the United States at the time.
The organ grinder and the young girl next to him
are likely performing for this group.
- [Beth] So we have the organ grinder,
perhaps a Italian immigrant, and the red-haired woman
on the right is likely an Irish immigrant.
- [Taylor] Lilly Martin Spencer herself was an immigrant.
There's an interesting statement here
that the artist, I think, is trying to make
and it has to do with the role of women and immigrants
in the United States after the Civil War.
- [Beth] The violence of the Civil War
and the beginnings of Reconstruction
were an enormously difficult period in American history.
What would be the new role of African Americans
in the country?
And so many women had entered the workforce during the war
and contributed to the war effort,
many of them by sewing American flags, sewing uniforms,
sewing caps, those women returned to the home after the war
but felt this very patriotic connection
to the union, to helping to restore the United States.
- [Taylor] And we can see a very clear example of that
in a few different places in this painting.
You have a sewing kit at the very bottom
right in front of the flag,
it looks like it's just waiting to be used.
Likewise, the woman in the center in white
and her young daughter behind her in red
both have thimbles on their middle fingers,
another example of the work that they're going to do
to help restore the nation.
- [Beth] So this idea that through their domestic functions
women could contribute significantly to the development
of the United States toward the restoration of the Union.
- [Taylor] The point is made even further
by the husband who's sitting at left, somewhat in shadow.
He's wearing what looks like a uniform.
We think that he may have gone out to fight
and come back injured, he's got his crutches behind him.
She's alluding to the fact
that so many able-bodied young men came back from the war
unable to help restore the country.
- [Beth] What's so wonderful about this painting too
is all of the generations that have come together,
so we have an older woman, an older gentleman,
that maternal figure of the artist herself with her children
and nursemaid and then the American flag conveying this idea
that it is the American family
that will lead the country into the future.
- [Taylor] Here we have this wonderful example
of how women in particular could contribute
to the recreation of a country that had been torn apart.
- [Beth] Although Lilly Martin Spencer
was essentially self-trained,
this is an expertly painted canvas.
We have a composition where the figures form a pyramid
and our eye is drawn immediately into that central figure
of the woman in white.
The narrative is very easy to follow,
and the way that she's painted the fabrics of the dresses,
the aprons, even the trees and the atmospheric perspective
that we see in the background, these are things
that male artists learned at the academic schools,
and here she is learned it on her own.
- [Taylor] In fact, she was offered the opportunity
to travel with both abroad and to New England
to learn with artists it is like Washington Allston.
She said, No, I want to stay here in the Midwest.
Lilly Martin Spencer had seven children of her own
and so she was able to recreate the nuances
of young children being cranky or fearful or shy.
And I think these are emotions at all people can relate to.
- [Beth] And considering this young American democracy,
creating an art for the public was such an important ideal.
- [Taylor] It's just such a really beautiful expression
of her integrating her family life into this work
that she hoped to sell.
- [Beth] I just so admire her ambition.
Apparently, at a very young age
she announced to her parents,
I'm going to be a painter! and held onto that ideal
with such tenacity through 13 children,
through a marriage,
through the difficulties of finding patrons and buyers
in the mid-19th century,
it's wonderful to stand here and look at this painting
by such a remarkable woman.
(bright jazz music)