Baby Chicks, Lilly Martin Spencer

Episode 67 Apr-2006, Loraine Lindenbaum, Docent I’m David Cateforis with another art minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Lilly Martin Spencer was one of the most successful American women painters of the 19th century. She specialized in genre paintings - scenes of everyday life. In her 1886 painting “Baby Chicks,” Spencer uses strong sunlight to highlight a bundle of baby chicks that squirm in the hands of a girl who holds them out to the viewer through an opening in the wall of a farm building. At first glance, we may focus on the girl’s hands cupping the fluffy yellow chicks, conveying a sense of intimacy between the birds and the child, her face dimly seen in the building’s shadowy interior. But questions arise. Is the child offering the chicks as a gift? Is she displaying nurturing love for the creatures nestled in her cupped hands? Do we sense apprehension in her wide-eyed expression in the mysterious, shadowed background? Is her gaze a pleading one, at once inviting us to admire her cherished chicks but also asking us not to touch them? Beyond any deeper meanings raised by such questions, one may conclude that Spencer’s little girl offers her appealing chicks to the urban viewer as a reminder of simple country pleasures - and of the miracle of fertility. With thanks to Loraine Lindenbaum for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.