Young America Does the Tennessee Waltz

Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum opens May 11 and will be on view at the Cheekwood Museum of Art in Nashville until July 29, 2001.

We Both Must Fade (Mrs. Fithian) by Lilly Martin Spencer is among more than fifty great works of early American art featured in the exhibition.

With all her riches and finery the lovely Mrs. Fithian will be no more able to preserve her beauty than the fragile rose that begins to wither in her grasp. The painting is a sentimental moral of youth and beauty. The extraordinary detail of her dress, a celestial blue satin overdraped with intricately painted lace, the brooch, and waistband that one could touch—they look so real—the petals dropping on the hem and the floor, all highlight the tragedy of time, which, after all, must pass. We, too, are drawn into the drama of this portrait; although we may not possess Mrs. Fithian's material wealth, we share her fate.

Lilly Martin Spencer was one of the first professional woman painters in America. She enjoyed great popularity as a painter of children and dogs. Mostly self-taught, she worked for a while in Cincinnati, then the "cultural capital" of the frontier, before moving to New York City.

Source: Amy Pastan. Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (New York and Washington, D.C.: Watson-Guptill Publications, in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000).

Pictured: Lilly Martin Spencer, 1822 England–1902 USA, We Both Must Fade (Mrs. Fithian), 1869, oil, 72 x 53 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.