WPAR@ ` ╟TEXT ` ╣Spencer, Lilly Martin1822╨1902painterBorn on November 26, 1822, in Exeter, England, Angelique Marie Martin was the daughter of French parents who emigrated to the United States in 1830. She grew up in Marietta, Ohio, and received a thorough education at home. She exhibited artistic talent from an early age and began studying drawing and oil painting with local artists. A showing of a group of paintings╤portraits, genre pieces, and literary scenes╤held in Marietta in 1841 was a success, and in the fall of that year she settled in Cincinnati, where in a few years she firmly established herself as a leading local artist. In August 1844 she married Benjamin R. Spencer. In 1848 she moved to New York City, where her work had already been exhibited successfully at the National Academy of Design and the American Art-Union. The latter institution, one of a number of similar ones that flourished for a time by holding exhibitions, distributing reproductions of artworks to members, and holding annual lotteries for originals, launched Spencer as a nationally known artist. Through it and the Western Art Union, which in 1849 commissioned her ╥One of Life╒s Happy Hours,╙ reproductions of her genre and anecdotal paintings reached thousands of homes. At an exhibit staged by the American Art-Union in 1852 her works brought higher prices than those of John J. Audubon, George Caleb Bingham, Eastman Johnson, and William S. Mount. She also received commissions for illustrations from Godey╒s Lady╒s Book and other magazines, illustrated such books as Elizabeth F. Ellet╒s Women of the American Revolution, 1850, and executed portraits on private commission. Among her portrait subjects were Mrs. Benjamin Harrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Robert G. Ingersoll. In 1858 Spencer and her large family moved to Newark, New Jersey, but a few years later she took a studio in New York City, where for some years she worked on her monumental ╥Truth Unveiling Falsehood,╙ which was acclaimed a masterwork on its completion in 1869. She refused as much as $20,000 for the painting; it was later lost. Her popularity declined in later years, although she continued to work. She died in New York City on May 22, 1902. Nstyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ ) !I ¼ 5¬ ¡ !I ▄ !I ∩ !I !I ▐ 1 !I 4 !I T !I ─ !I ▐ ┌ !I ≈ 5¬ ° !I .link ` HYPR 1HYPR ─ ┌
