Thomas Wilmer Dewing (May 4, 1851 - 1938): A Reading, 1897 (Smithsonian)
“From 1890, Dewing concentrated his efforts on idealized depictions of elegant, attenuated young women, singly or in small groups, idling in fresh green fields. Most of these “decorations,” as he called them, were painted during the Dewings’ residence in Cornish, New Hampshire.
From about 1905, Dewing shifted his attention from exterior to interior settings for his work. 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 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.” - Emery Battis. Artist Biographies for the exhibition American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000).
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