Paintings of Thomas Wilmer Dewing at Brooklyn Museum

Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Lady in Gold, cca.1912
oil on canvas
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Lady_in_Gold_-_Thomas_Wilmer_Dewing_-_overall.jpg)
no copyright infringement intended

Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s paintings often possess an aura of mystery. It is as if the artist defies us to imagine who the women are and why they seem so otherworldly. The thick, almost hothouse atmosphere in which this woman sits seems suffocating, and her half-closed eyes suggest that she is in a trancelike state. These qualities have led some feminist interpreters to conclude that Dewing portrayed women as beautiful symbols of an aesthetically oriented inner life that was separate from the world of commerce and social interaction.

(Brooklyn Museum)

Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Unknown Woman, cca.1890
pastel on brown wove paper, mounted overall to pulpboard
(http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/1187/Unknown_Woman#)
no copyright infringement intended

Influenced by the works of James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Wilmer Dewing gravitated to the pastel medium for its evocative qualities, which were well suited to the pale, introspective female subjects he favored. Dewing adopted Whistler’s preference for assertively dark papers, but he far exceeded Whistler in his exploitation of the medium’s veil-like effects to evoke a sense of vagueness and immateriality.

(Brooklyn Museum)

Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Garrett Frieze, 1885
oil on canvas in five panels
(http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/1704/Garrett_Frieze#)
no copyright infringement intended

Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Music, cca. 1896-1900
oil on canvas mounted on composition board and wooden panel
(http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/1553/Music#)
no copyright infringement intended

(Thomas Wilmer Dewing)

(Brooklyn Museum)

Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Summer

Thomas Wilmer Dewing - Summer, circa 1890
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum. Gift of William T. Evans
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Wilmer_Dewing_-_Summer_-_ca._1890.jpg)
no copyright infringement intended

(Thomas Wilmer Dewing)

(American Art and Portraiture)

Reconfiguring Beauty: Thomas Wilmer Dewing

Thomas Wilmer Dewing - Girl with Lute (1904)
oil on wood panel
Freer Gallery of Art. Gift of Charles Lang Freer
(http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/americanart/default.htm)
no copyright infringement intended

Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851 - 1938, born in New England, with studies at Académie Julian in Paris, lived for the most part of his life in NY) was a Tonalist artist (a style following the influences of the English Aestheticism and of the French school of Barbizon: the technical advancements brought by Barbizon used with the primacy of Aesthetic values in mind - Tonalist landscapes emphasized mood and shadow - like the English Aestheticism,  Tonalism could be associated with Symbolism, and Parnassianism, and Decadentism, while resolutely not with Impressionism and all modern artistic currents that followed - however, Dewing the Tonalist was a member of the Ten American Painters group of Impressionists - it is not easy to define borders, even between opposite styles).

Dewing's preferred vehicle of artistic expression is the female figure situated in a moody and dreamlike surrounding. Often seated playing instruments, writing letters, or simply communicating with one another, Dewing's sensitively portrayed figures have a detachment from the viewer that keeps the spectator a remote witness to the scene rather than a participantt.

(Wiki)

Smithsonian Books published in 1996 The Art Of Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Beauty Reconfigured, written by Susan A. Hobbs and Barbara Dayer Gallati, proving the renewed interest nowadays for Tonalism. Now that the dogma of Modernism itself is under question, a fresh assessment of Tonalism is underway, free of political sway (Wiki).

• Summer
• Paintings of Thomas Wilmer Dewing at Brooklyn Museum

(Old Masters)

(Smithsonian Castle)