Thomas Wilmer Dewing

Thomas Wilmer Dewing painted elegant women in quiet, dreamy settings: seated in sparse interiors, playing music, reading letters, or drifting through misty green meadows. His colours are muted and soft, and the mood is hushed and refined.

He was born in Boston in 1851, studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and settled in New York, where he taught at the Art Students League. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1888 and was a founding member of the Ten American Painters in 1898. His style belongs to Tonalism, and his great patron was Charles Lang Freer, whose collection in the Freer Gallery in Washington has a room devoted to him.

Before the Mirror and In the Garden show the two settings he used most. Look at how the figures seem to float in the soft haze. He died in New York in 1938.