Provenance

Smith College Museum of Art

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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.”
Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Lady with a Lute, 1886, oil on wood, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Walter Timme, 1978.60.1

Lady with a Lute

Thomas Wilmer Dewing · 1886 · oil on wood ·  Accession ID  1978.60.1