DEWING’S WOMEN OF MYSTERY by Joan K Yanni

DEWING’S WOMEN OF MYSTERY

by Joan K Yanni

Thomas Wilmer Dewing is known for his paintings of fragile, enigmatic women, either seated in sparse interiors, lost in thought, or wandering over soft green fields. The Gallery's Portrait in a Brown Dress (57.79) is a lovely example of his work.

The slender, elegant woman in the painting sits in a straight wooden chair and holds a book. She is dreaming, not reading, however; her eyes are focused on something far away. There is no depth in the painting. Its background, no doubt the interior of a room, is a subdued gray green, immediately behind the figure. There is nothing to give any clue to the woman's station in life except the beautifully draped, lace trimmed gown, cut to reveal her long, graceful neck. Though the title is Portrait in a Brown Dress, the dress is more an orange-toned burnt sienna, with a thin wash of gray-blue. It is one of Dewing's tonality pictures, with diffuse lighting and a limited palette.

Dewing was born in Boston in 1851. Since his family had only a modest income, he had little formal education. At an early age he was apprenticed in a lithography shop and soon became a remarkable draftsman. In his twenties he took drawing lessons from William Rimmer (The Falling Gladiator), who taught drawing and anatomy lessons in Boston's Studio Building and at the Lowell Institute.

In 1876 Dewing went to Paris, where he studied at the Academie Julien. There he learned the academic techniques that govern his work. The Julian offered students virtually the same curriculum as the École des Beaux Arts, without the stiff entrance requirements. Dewing's teachers were Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger, famous in their day as molders of American talent.

Soon after his return to New York in 1878, his work began to attract attention. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design and with the Academy of American Artists. In 1881 he began teaching at the Art Students League, and married Maria Oakey, a flower painter, who provided the landscapes in several of his paintings.

He began to paint his cool, detached women around 1990. The quiet, yet tense aura of these women is said to recall the women of Vermeer, who Dewing admired, in attitude if not technique. Dewing also became adept with pastel and silverpoint, producing figure studies and nudes of extraordinary beauty.

In 1898 he was a founder-member of the Ten American Painters, a group who had become dissatisfied with the aesthetic aims and exhibition policies of the academies. Among the members of The Ten were John Twachtman, Edmund Tarbell, Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf and J. Alden Weir and, later, William Merritt Chase. The group exhibited together for almost 20 years.

In 1885 Dewing's friend Augustus Saint-Gaudens bought some land from New York lawyer Charles S. Beaman and moved to Cornish, NH. (See September 1998 article on Saint-Gaudens.) Dewing joined him there a year later, buying a farmhouse near the Beaman family. Dewing later painted portraits of Beaman and his wife Hettie, as Saint-Gaudens had created MAG's relief sculptures of them.

In 1890 Dewing met his patron, industrialist Charles Lang Freer, at the Players Club, a meeting place in New York City for rising young artists, business men and patrons of the arts. Freer financed Dewing's studies and travels abroad, and ultimately his apprenticeship with James McNeil Whistler. Dewing's spare use of paint and little color resemble Whistler's technique.

Architect Stanford White was a member of both the Players Club and the Cornish colony, and a good friend of Dewing. White designed frames for many of Dewing's paintings, including Portrait in a Brown Dress. Frame expert Bill Adair, when he visited Rochester, noted that conservation of our frame left it shinier than it had been originally. The grill work was filled in, whereas at first metal mesh was laid on top of a gold base.

Dewing enjoyed considerable success in his career. After the Armory Show of 1913, his paintings fell out of fashion as audiences looked for bright colors and abstraction in art. After 1920 he painted very little and spent his last years at his home in Cornish. He died in 1938.

The Cornish Art Colony: Cornish, a small New Hampshire town located along the Connecticut River, became a popular haven for artists and literary figures in the late 1800s. Much of their work pictured the lush Cornish landscape and featured the prominent Mt. Ascutney. The group who worked there became known as the Cornish Art Colony. The settling of the colony is credited to New York lawyer Charles C. Beaman, who bought up farmland in Cornish and encouraged friends to join him for summers there.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, lured by the prospect of beautiful, private, and inexpensive property, was probably the first to spend summers there in 1885. The following year Thomas W. Dewing arrived, then Stephen Parrish, Frederick Mac Monnies, Daniel French, George deForest Brush, and Charles A. Platt. Later, Maxfield Parrish built himself a house and studio near Cornish. Ultimately over 100 members of America's artistic, literary and political circles made the area their home between 1885 and 1930. Today the scenic area continues to attract artists.

Sources: Curatorial files, Grove Dictionary of Art, Encarta Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Dictionary of American Art.