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Thomas Wilmer Dewing (May 4, 1851 – November
5, 1938) was an American painter working at the
turn of the 20th century.  He was born in Newton
Lower Falls, Massachusetts.  He studied at the
Académie Julian in Paris, and later settled into
a studio in New York City. He married Maria Oakey
Dewing, an accomplished painter who possibly
intimidated Dewing due to her extensive formal art
training and familial links with the art world. 

He is best known for his tonalism|tonalist
paintings, a sub-genre of American art that was
rooted in English Aestheticism. Dewing's most
common vehicle of artistic expression is the
female figure. Often seated playing instruments,
writing letters, or engaged in other impassive
actions and situated in gauzy, dreamy interiors,
the figures remain remote and distant to the
viewer. These scenes are tinged with color that
pervades the entire picture, setting tone and
mood. Some feminist critics have lambasted
Dewing's work as being misogynistic; he rarely
painted anything other than the female figure
decked in sumptuous clothing with vacant
expressions. 

Tonalism quickly came to be considered outdated
with the advent of modernism and abstraction in
art, though Dewing was successful in his own day.
His art was considered extremely elegant, and has
undergone a subtle revival in the last 10 years or
so. The foremost Dewing scholar living today is
Susan A. Hobbs. The most complete publication
regarding Dewing in book format is "The Art of
Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Beauty Reconfigured".

Dewing was a member of the Ten American Painters,
a group of Impressionists who seceded from the
Society of American Artists in 1897.


==External Links== 
*http://americanart.si.edu/search/search_saamweb2.
cfm?Saam_Collections=tms&Saam_Criteria=dewing&head
er=Artworks%20from%20our%20Collection Major body
of Dewing's work located at the Washington, D.C.
Smithsonian Institute
*http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1026/i
s_n3_v149/ai_18159915 Magazine Antiques article by
Susan Hobbs, March 1996