Head of a Girl

c. 1909

Thomas Wilmer Dewing

Artist, American, 1851 - 1938

The head and neck of a girl is drawn with layers of delicate, faint silverpoint lines on vertically oriented, cream-white paper. The girl is angled to our right and looks off in that direction with shaded eyes. She has broad, high cheekbones, a straight nose, and her full lips are closed with a faint suggestion of a smile and a dimple in the cheek we see. Her hair is parted down the middle and pulled loosely back and up. Her shoulders below the neck are sparsely sketched in. The drawing is done with fine, almost ghostly lines, which gives the portrait an ethereal, insubstantial look. The artist signed the drawing in the lower right corner, “T W Dewing.”

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    silverpoint on prepared wove paper

  • Credit Line

    Corcoran Collection (Bequest of James Parmelee)

  • Dimensions

    image (irregular): 19.05 × 17.15 cm (7 1/2 × 6 3/4 in.)
    sheet: 34.61 × 29.85 cm (13 5/8 × 11 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    2015.19.498

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Montross Gallery, New York); James Parmelee, Washington, DC, 1909; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1941; acquired 2015 by the National Gallery of Art

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1963

  • Thomas W. Dewing, Durlacher Bros., New York, 1963, no. 39

1983

  • American Master Drawings from the Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1983

1986

  • American Masters: Works on Paper from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, 1986-1988, pp. 43-44, no. 23, repro

2015

  • Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2015

Bibliography

1983

  • Simmons, Linda Crocker and with the assistance of Adrianne J. Humphrey, et al. American Drawings, Watercolors, Pastels, and Collages in the Collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Washington, DC: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1983: p. 98, no. 639.

Inscriptions

lower right in silverpoint: T W DEWING

Wikidata ID

Q64633319

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