Thomas Willmer Dewing (1851-1938) was born in Boston. He was apprenticed to a lithographer, and went to Paris in 1876 to study at the Academie Julian. On returning to Boston and then New York in 1878, he exhibited with the newly founded Society of American Artists. Its first exhibition in March 1878 took place at the Kurtz Gallery in New York City. The Society was formed as a rebellion against the conservative National Academy of Design. The group included Cassatt, Eakins, Chase, La Farge, and Ryder, all young plein air artists who had studied in Paris or Munich. Dewing met Maria Oakey, also an artist and a founding member of the Art Students League in 1875. They married in 1881. That same year, Dewing began teaching at the Art Students League.
Lady in Yellow (1888) (oil) (20’’x16’’) (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston) was first exhibited at the Boston Art Club in 1888. From there, Dewing sent it to the Paris Universal Exposition in 1889, where it won a silver medal and gained him an international reputation as the portrait painter of the day.
The time period of the last 30 years of the 19 Century was referred to as the Gilded Age. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and JP Morgan made fantastic fortunes and acquired art for their mansions. Among them was Isbella Stewart Gardner and her husband who collected Whistler, Sargent, and the Impressionists. Gardner purchased Lady in Yellow in 1888, and she asked the famous architect Stanford White to design the frame. The painting hangs in the yellow room in her Boston the museum that was her former home.
Dewing is classified as a tonalist, a term created by American art critics for paintings that used muted colors, soft edges, and moody dreamlike surroundings. Lady in Yellow represents Dewing’s signature style. The beautiful young lady wears a frothy yellow gown that flows over more than half the portrait. The gown is painted with fine overlapping layers of yellows. Her arms and hands are at rest, her body is in profile, so she does not see the viewer. She sits quietly with her own thoughts.
Dewing and his wife spent summers in Cornish, New Hampshire, at an artist colony, considered by its residents to be a utopian retreat. They believed beauty and art exist on a higher plain of living. They organized parties, performances, and pageants that harmonized with the beauty of the natural setting of the Cornish woods. They were both avid gardeners. They considered the place to be an aesthetic counterbalance to the dirt and grime of the industrial cities.
In the Garden (1892-94) (21”x35”) (SAAM) is typical of Dewing’s work. Three young and beautiful women, wearing elegant contemporary gowns, stroll in a misty dark green garden. They walk separately as if in a dream-like state. The ground is indistinct from the trees. A few white flowers dot the landscape. The moon rises at the upper right. A barely distinguishable potted plant sits at the lower right. The plant in the pot may be a Dewing device to contrast the freedom of nature with the confinement of the city.
The painting is one of many purchased by John Gellatly (1853-1931), a New York businessman and collector. He gave his collection to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1929. He was one of Dewing’s major patrons who also supported Whistler, Sargeant, Hassam, among other American artists. Dewing was a founding member of the Society of Landscape Painters (1899).
The Four Sylvan Sounds (1896) (oil) (69”x60”) (Freer) is painted on a Japanese folding screen. Unlike many of Dewing’s works, this work has specific symbolic meaning. He explained that reading from right to left, as Japanese screens do, there are “the four forest notes—the Hermit Thrush, the sound of running water, the woodpecker, and the wind through pine trees.” The scenes are not specific depictions of these elements. They are suggested by four beautiful women who are dressed in ancient Grecian chitons, painted in very light pastels. The women are seated in profile and seem to be listening to nature. Leaves and grasses are painted with more detail, and a few white blossoms are placed strategically in the work. Dewing’s wife Maria was an extremely talented painter, mostly of flowers. She often added these subtle touches to his paintings.
Dewing drew his inspiration from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem Wood Notes, inspired by a long walk through a wood in Maine. The poet writes of hearing and seeing the “woodpecker,” “the song of the waterfall tones,” “tawney thrushes,” and “the wind.”
Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919) purchased the painting from Dewing in 1897. The wealthy industrialist and art collector also hired Dewing to act for him as a buying agent. Freer collected American, East Asian, and Middle Eastern art. Whistler’s Peacock Room was among the many works. Freer gave his collection to the Smithsonian Institution in 1906, and he provided the funds for the construction of the Freer Gallery.
Thomas and Maria Dewing were well connected and socially active. He was a lover of music. In The Lute (1904) (oil) (36”x48”) (Freer), like many of his paintings, women play or hold musical instruments. Here, three women sit on benches on a green lawn and listen to a fourth woman who plays the lute. Dewing rarely depicted allegorical themes, but he always placed women in idyllic landscapes. His work was extremely popular, and he was a great success. The architect Stanford White designed many elaborate frames for Dewing.
Dewing’s paintings such as Lady in Gold (1912) (oil) (24”x18”) (Brooklyn Museum) were popular during his lifetime. After 1920, he and his wife lived in Cornish, New Hampshire most of the time. The Armory Show in New York (1913) signaled a new trend for the arts, including work by Picasso, Matisse, and others. In a letter to Freer, dated February 16, 1901, Dewing wrote, “My decorations belong to the poetic and imaginative world where a few choice spirits live.”
