Lady with a Lute

1886

Thomas Wilmer Dewing

Painter, American, 1851 - 1938

A woman sits facing our right in profile, looking through downcast eyes at a lute she holds upright in her lap in this vertical painting. She has smooth, pale skin, and her tawny-brown hair is pulled gathered at the back of her neck. She holds her head high, so she looks down through lowered eyes toward her lap. Her full, pale-pink lips are slightly parted. Her long gown swirls with tones of pine, moss, and sage green with a few strokes of earth brown. Her garment, especially around the neckline, is loosely painted so it is difficult to tell if her decolletage is bare or is covered by a sheer fabric. The sleeve we see is slashed along the elbow so fabric in lighter green shows through. Her dress drapes over her feet, which are cropped by the bottom right corner of the composition. The woman is brightly lit from the upper center, but the bench on which she sits blends into the nearly black background. She braces the neck of the lute where it meets the body with long, delicate fingers, so the instrument stands in her lap with the flat soundboard facing her. The neck tips slightly away from her body, and she rests her right hand, closer to us, on the soundboard with her fingers crooked. The lute is a mahogany brown and has radiating lines that extend from the side closest to us up along the back of the body. The pegboard at the top of the neck is barely cropped by the right edge of the composition. The lute is finely detailed, which contrasts with the loose brushwork of the woman’s dress. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower left corner, “TW Dewing 86.”

Media Options

This object’s media is free and in the public domain. Read our full Open Access policy for images.
Information on this painting can be found in the Gallery publication American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I, pages 127-130, which is available as a free PDF at https://www.nga.gov/content/dam/ngaweb/research/publications/pdfs/american-paintings-19th-century-part-1.pdf
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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on wood

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Walter Timme

  • Dimensions

    overall: 50.8 x 40 cm (20 x 15 3/4 in.)
    framed: 88.3 x 77.2 x 9.5 cm (34 3/4 x 30 3/8 x 3 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1978.60.1

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Purchased 1889 from the artist by Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts;[1] (sale, Gimbel Brothers, New York, 1946). Dr. and Mrs. Walter Timme, Cold Spring, New York, by May 1947;[2] bequest 1978 to NGA.
[1] Letter from Linda Muehlig, curator at Smith College, dated 4 May 1983 (in NGA curatorial files), states that the painting was bought directly from the artist in 1889. While in the Smith College collection the painting was titled A Lute Player.
[2] According to a letter of 30 August 1978 from Susan Hobbs (in NGA curatorial files), Mrs. Timme acquired the painting at the Gimbel Brothers auction; however, in a letter of 16 May 1947 to Frederick Hartt, acting director of the Smith College Art Museum (Smith College Art Museum archives; photocopy in NGA curatorial files), Dr. Timme states that he had "paid nearly three times what Gimbel's had sold it for," which clearly implies there was an intermediary owner. Timme also observed: "The `Lute Player'. . . was thought by many people to be [Dewing's] masterpiece. I have known a number of people both painters and connoisseurs who made a pilgrimage to Northampton just to see that picture. To some people your gallery was known by this picture, if by none other. . . . Some weeks ago a friend of mine, connected with the National (Mellon) Gallery in Washington, came to my home, saw it and asked for the donation of it as an outstanding example of Dewing."
Further clarification, not published in the NGA systematic catalogue entry, is provided in a letter of 5 July 1998 from Susan Hobbs (in NGA curatorial files). She relates that in 1983 she went over the sequence of events with Nelson White (Thayer's biographer and friend of Dr. Timme's). Her notes on the conversation indicate that Gimbels & Co. sold the painting to Milch Gallery, who in turn sold it to Dr. Timme. Nelson White got Dr. Timme to give him right of first refusal if he ever wanted to sell it. (See also Masterworks of American Painting and Sculpture from the Smith College Museum of Art, Ed. Linda Muehlig, New York, 1999:10-11, 245 n. 8.)

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1912

  • Seventh Annual Exhibition of Selected Paintings by American Artists, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 1912, 18, no. 51, , repro. no. 43, as A Lute Player.

1950

  • Special Exhibition of American Paintings in Honor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Diamond Jubilee, The Milch Galleries, New York, 1950, no. 4, as Lady with Lute.

1996

  • The Art of Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Beauty Reconfigured, The Brooklyn Museum of Art; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1996-1997, no. 29, repro.

2015

  • The Art of Music, San Diego Museum of Art; Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, 2015-2016, no. 148, repro. (shown only in San Diego).

Bibliography

1912

  • Buffalo Fine Arts Academy. Academy Notes 7 (July 1912): 49-51, repro. 50.

1925

  • Handbook of the Art Collections of Smith College. Northampton, Massachusetts, 1925: 15.

1937

  • Smith College Art Museum Catalogue. Northampton, Massachusetts, 1937: 3, repro. 48.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 143, repro.

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: 17, 124, no. 43, color repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: color repro. 163, 188-190.

1983

  • Wilmerding 1983, 145, repro. 142.

1988

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 20, 144, no. 49, color repro.

1990

  • Merrill, Linda. An Ideal Country: Paintings by Dwight William Tryon in the Freer Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1990: 97, n. 276.

1991

  • Hiesinger, Ulrich. Impressionism in America: The Ten American Painters. New York: Prestel, 1991, pp. 82, 113, 238, fig. 24.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 158, repro.

1996

  • Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 127-130, color repro.

1999

  • Muehlig, Linda, ed. Masterworks of American Painting and Sculpture from the Smith College Museum of Art. Northampton, 1999: 10-11, 245 n. 8.

  • Koja, Stephan, ed. America: The New World in 19th-Century Painting. Exh. cat. Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna. Munich, London, and New York, 1999: 46, fig. 7 (not in the exhibition).

2001

  • Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001: 14, fig. 2 (not in the exhibition).

Inscriptions

lower left: T W Dewing / 86

Wikidata ID

Q20189819

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