Oil painting -> List of Painters -> Thomas Dewing

   Thomas Dewing

Early Days: 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 Academie Julian in Paris, and later settled into a studio in New York City. He married Maria Oakey Dewing, an accomplished painter with extensive formal art training and familial links with the art world.

Career:

He is best known for his tonalist paintings, a sub-genre of American art that was rooted in English Aestheticism. Dewing's preferred 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 infused with subtle color harmonies that pervade the entire picture, setting tone and mood.

Tonalism as a style was rejected as being outdated the arrival of modernism and abstraction in art.