DEWING, Thomas Wilmer

American painter. As a child he was interested in both drawing and in playing the violin; this early interest in music would later reappear in the themes of many of his paintings. By 1872, after a period of apprenticeship in a lithography shop, Dewing was listing his profession as “artist.” He studied paintings in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, especially the works of Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin. He worked briefly in Albany, New York, during 1875-1876 and in July 1876 went to Europe.

In Paris, Dewing entered the Académie Julian, where the course of instruction, under Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, centred on anatomical drawing and modeling. While in Paris, Dewing became acquainted with the American painter William Merritt Chase and, like Chase, developed a particular interest in Spanish painting.

Dewing returned to America early in 1878, stopping first in New York and then going to Boston, where he became an assistant at the newly founded School of the Museum of Fine Arts. In the late 1870s he participated in several Boston exhibitions, showing paintings that recalled the fashionable academic works of French artists such as Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jean-Louis Hamon (1821-1874). Deciding that New York provided greater opportunities for an aspiring artist, Dewing moved there in 1880. He soon came into contact with many of the young artists who had formed the Society of American Artists out of dissatisfaction with the National Academy of Design. Dewing was elected a member of the Society in 1880 and in 1881 began teaching at the Art Students League, where he renewed his friendship with Chase. In 1881 he married the artist Maria Oakey, through whom he had been introduced to an active cultural circle. In 1886, the Dewings moved to the famous Studio Building at 3 North Washington Circle; by this time his works were exhibited regularly in New York shows and elsewhere.

By the late 1880s Dewing had formed his basic style and subject matter - elegant, refined women portrayed with an extremely limited range of colours and placed in sparse interiors or outdoors in soft green fields. He drew inspiration from the paintings of the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer and from the aesthetics of James A. M. Whistler and the English artist Albert Moore (1841-1893). His brushwork became increasingly soft and blurred.

Dewing continued to paint actively in the early years of the twentieth century, receiving several awards. He did little work during the last decade of his life.