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Portrait of Eliza Williams Stone Paine Dewing

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Portrait of Eliza Williams Stone Paine Dewing

1869
black chalk on cream wove paper
24 in. x 19 in. (60.96 cm x 48.26 cm)
Gift of Ruth D. Ewing in memory of her grandmother Eliza Paine Dewing, 2001.23

Thomas Wilmer Dewing
American
1851–1938

Thomas Wilmer Dewing is best known for his refined and vaguely mysterious images of women. Born in Boston in 1851, he worked for a lithography firm before going to Paris in 1876 to further his training under Gustave Boulanger (1824-1888) and Jules Lefebvre (1836-1911) at the Académie Julian. Back in the United States, Dewing began to paint decorative figure compositions whose enigmatic quality suggests symbolic or allegorical meaning. Like those of James Mc Neill Whistler (1834-1903), Dewing's figures are seldom subjects in and of themselves but serve as vehicles of poetic expression, tone, and mood.

Beginning in the late 1870s Dewing held a series of teaching positions at the school of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Art Students League of New York, and the National Academy of Design, to which he was elected academician in 1887. A silver medal awarded at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889 further cemented his reputation, and during the following decade Dewing took his place in the forefront of progressive American painting. Joining the Impressionists Edmund Tarbell (q.v.), Frank Benson (q.v.) and others, he became a founding member of the Ten American Painters in 1898. He continued to specialize in images of elegant and introspective women, and in a number of his paintings, he collaborated with his wife, painter Maria Oakey Dewing (1845-1928). Dewing's work enjoyed the patronage of wealthy collectors John Gellatly and Charles Lang Freer, but in the years following the Armory Show of 1913, it began to fall out of favor in avant-garde circles. Disillusioned by the spread of Cubism and other modern styles, the artist painted few works after 1920. Pastel became his primary medium, and over the course of the decade he gradually withdrew from public scrutiny. All but forgotten, the artist died in New York City in 1938.

Like other talented but relatively unknown young artists (the youthful Eastman Johnson [q.v.], for example), Dewing commenced his life as an independent professional by taking orders for portraits in chalk. Requiring little outlay in time and materials, and available to clients at a reasonable price, such works could bring a gifted neophyte both money and recognition. During the late 1860s and early 1870s Dewing's accomplished portraits gained favor in Boston art circles, and as his reputation spread, he traveled farther afield. In 1875 patrons Peter and Susan Gansevoort paved the way for Dewing to spend a good part of the following year taking commissions in their home town of Albany, New York. To a large extent, it was the income derived from these portraits that enabled the artist to travel to Paris for formal study.

The Currier's Portrait of Eliza Williams Stone Paine Dewing is a fine example of Dewing's chalk portraiture and one of the artist's earliest known works. Executed at the age of seventeen years, this portrait of the artist's sister-in-law demonstrates Dewing's already considerable abilities. The subject, her head turned three-quarters to the right, displays a thoughtful expression that foreshadows the interiority of Dewing's paintings of the 1880s and 1890s. At the same time, a strong concern with naturalism is evident in the artist's careful attention to the different textures of hair, skin, and clothing. Reminiscent of an academic study or a cabinet photograph, Dewing's portrait reveals an earnest desire to record the truth of physical appearances. As he grew in artistic maturity, however, he became increasingly concerned with the "higher" truths of aesthetic refinement and poetic vision. The clear contours and descriptive passages of Eliza Paine Dewing eventually gave way to a more atmospheric approach emphasizing mood and suggestion. Thus the Currier portrait is a rare and important document in the development of an artist who is today recognized as one of the leading spirits of Gilded Age painting.

Dewing's portrait may have been made to commemorate the marriage of the subject to the artist's brother, Charles Hamlet Dewing, on January 26, 1869. Carefully preserved by family members, it descended to granddaughter Ruth D. Ewing, who presented it to the Currier Museum of Art in 2001.

VSD

REFERENCE

Susan A. Hobbs. The Art of Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Beauty Reconfigured. Ex. cat. Brooklyn Museum, 1996.


Provenance
Ruth D. Ewing (great niece of the artist and granddaughter to the sitter)
Gift to Currier Gallery of Art, 2001

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