Summer Artist: Thomas Wilmer Dewing (American, 1851–1938)
Designer: Stanford White (American, 1853–1906)

1890

American Paintings and Sculpture

On view, 2nd floor, American Art before 1900

Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s dreamlike settings stand in stark contrast to the newly industrialized, gritty environment of late nineteenth-century America. Inspired by the work of James McNeill Whistler, Asian design, and music, Dewing believed that the purpose of the artist is to "see beautifully." While slender birches sway in measured counterpoint and delicate harp music fills the air, four elegant young women perform a stately arabesque across the canvas, their glowing evening gowns a graceful beat of muted gold, rose, brown, pink, and red. Dewing’s friend the architect Stanford White made the decorative frame.

Medium

Oil on canvas in an original gilded plaster and pine frame

Dimensions

20 1/2 × 36 in. (52.1 × 91.4 cm)

Credit Line

Gift of the Estate of Miss Frances L. Howland

Accession Number

1947.83

Geography

Made in Cornish, New Hampshire, United States

Culture

American

Period

19th century

Classification

Paintings

Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance
Charles Lang Freer, by purchase from the artist for his friend James B. Williams, by c. 1891-unknown date; Miss Francis L. Howland; gift of the estate of Miss Frances L. Howland to Yale University Art Gallery.
Bibliography
  • American Art: Selections from the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2023), 176–77, no. 78, ill
  • Susan A. Hobbs and Shoshanna Abeles, Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Beauty into Art, A Catalogue Raisonne (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2018), 242–43, no. 96, fig. 96
  • Helen A. Cooper et al., Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2008), 350–51, no. 228, ill
  • Michael Quick, George Inness: A Catalgoue Raisonne, 2 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University, 2007), 37
  • Matthew M. McCarty, "The City in Summer," Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2004), 102, fig. 1
  • Martha Banta, Imaging American Women: Idea and Ideals in Cultural History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987),
  • American Art Analog, 3 (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986),
  • Theodore E. Stebbins Jr. and Galina Gorokhoff, A Checklist of American Paintings at Yale University (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1982), 39
  • Helen A. Cooper and Jules David Prown, "Americans Paintings and Sculpture at Yale," Antiques 117 (June 1980),
  • Richard Watson Gilder, The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908), p. 156
  • C. H. Caffin and Freer Gallery of Art Scrapbooks, "Art Notes," New York Sun (February 28, 1900),
  • "At the Academy of Design," New York Times (May 10, 1891),
  • "The Academy Exhibition," Art Amateur 24 (May 1891), 142
  • "The National Academy of Design," Art Interchange 26 (April 25, 1891), 129
Object copyright
No Copyright - United States
Additional information

Object/Work type

allegories, figures (representations), human figures (visual works), landscapes (representations)

Subject

Nature dresses movement (compositional concept) music spirits (beings) women

Signed

Signed lower left "T. W. Dewing/90"

Technical metadata and APIs

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