Our Servant

Although Spencer was born in England to parents of French descent, she was raised in Marietta, Ohio, and studied in Cincinnati. A married mother of 13 children, Spencer was the breadwinner in her household, gaining acclaim for her work in the U.S. and Europe in the 1840s. This drawing is notable for its attention to the painstaking labor of a female domestic worker, a subject frequently overlooked or romanticized in 19th-century American art.