Thomas Wilmer Dewing Paintings |
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Biography of Thomas Wilmer DewingAmerican artistborn 1851 - died 1938 Student of: Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911) from circa 1876 to 1878 Thomas Wilmer Dewing, a native of Boston, studied successively in Paris and Munich from 1876 to 1879. On his return to America Thomas Wilmer Dewing joined the newly organized Society of American artists and promptly immersed himself in New York's cultural scene, which was centered in the salon of Richard Watson Gilder. |
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Gilder was editor of The
Century magazine and aesthetic arbiter to a
circle of prominent artists, writers,
musicians and millionaires—tastemakers to
the Gilded Age. At Gilder's, Thomas Wilmer Dewing met a
highly congenial bon vivant in the person of
architect Stanford White, who became his
cohort about town and resident frame maker.
"Tommy" and "Stanny" were inseparable until
White's tragic death in 1905. |
In 1897, Thomas Wilmer Dewing joined the Ten American
Painters, defectors from the Society of
American artists who now sought more
advantageous conditions for the exhibition
of their work. For twenty years this group
annually exhibited their work. From about 1905, Dewing shifted his attention from exterior to interior settings for his work. |
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The interiors are softly painted, tonally uniform, generalized and ambiguous; the figures are presented alone or in pairs, prominently placed in shallow space. But, however close-up, they remain essentially the same elegant, detached creatures, elusive, idealized, and contemplative. As one critic observed, "the Thomas Wilmer Dewing type was intellectual enough to be worthy of Boston; aristocratic enough to be worthy of Philadelphia; well enough dressed to be a New Yorker, but seldom pretty enough to evoke the thought of Baltimore"—but always genteel enough to insulate the viewer from disturbing thoughts of the tumultuous changes that were taking place in the real world of commerce and industry. |
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Dewing was singularly fortunate in having a pair of wealthy patrons who were devoted to his work. The New York insurance magnate John Gellatly was convinced that Thomas Wilmer Dewing was "the greatest living painter" and consequently acquired thirty-one of his paintings, most of which were bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institution. The Detroit businessman and railroad-car manufacturer Charles Lang Freer was sufficiently enamoured of Dewing's "decorations" to have purchased twenty-seven of them for incorporation in his eponymous gallery of art in Washington, D.C. Though their subject matter no longer fulfills its original inspirational intent, the rich painterly skills of the artist continue to delight the eye and mind. | ||||||
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