Thomas Wilmer Dewing Paintings

Biography of Thomas Wilmer Dewing

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.

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.

It was also at Gilder's salon that Thomas Wilmer Dewing met the talented artist Maria Oakey (1845–1927), who would become his wife and a significant influence on his work. Miss Oakey, who had studied with John La Farge, encouraged Thomas Wilmer Dewing to move from his hard-edged figurative style toward the softer, tonalist expression that characterized his painting thereafter.

From 1890, Thomas Wilmer 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 Thomas Wilmer Dewing called them, were painted during the Dewings' residence in Cornish, New Hampshire. There during the summer holidays they enjoyed the lively company of White, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, George de Forest Brush, the young Maxfield Parrish, and other urban expatriates.

It was also during this period that Ms. Oakey-Dewing shifted her attention from figurative studies to flower arrangements—close-up, soft-focus views, cropped to suggest continuation into exterior space. On at least one occasion, she contributed the floral elements to a major work of her husband.