Summer
Thomas Wilmer Dewing
ca. 1890
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans
Accession Number
1909.7.21
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
femalesummer
About this artwork
Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s paintings of elegant women evoked an exclusive world of beauty and refined taste. From 1885 until 1905, Dewing was a key figure in the artist colony at Cornish, New Hampshire, which included Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Abbott Thayer. They agreed that art and beauty offered a “higher life” for an age in which Darwin’s theories challenged Christian beliefs and urban industrialization disrupted life’s natural rhythms. Summer shows women in evening gowns theatrically posed in n...