About This Artwork

Thomas Wilmer Dewing
American, 1851-1938

Lady in Green and Gray, 1911

Oil on canvas
61.3 x 50.8 cm (24 1/8 x 20 in.)
Signed lower right: "TW Dewing"

Friends of American Art Collection, 1911.5

Thomas Wilmer Dewing began creating decorative paintings of women in interiors around 1886, using this subject to explore formal issues of color and composition. Like the American painter James McNeill Whistler, with whom he worked with periodically in London, Dewing was especially concerned with rendering subtle distinctions of hue and value. Although his paintings were not intended to be portraits of individuals, many of his sitters have been identified as his friends or lovers, professional models, or actresses. The woman depicted in Lady in Green and Gray is Gertrude McNeill, an actress who frequently posed for Dewing between 1911 and 1917.

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Boston, Vose Galleries, Jan. 3–Mar. 1922.

Milwaukee Art Institute, An Exhibition of Forty Paintings Presented to The Art Institute of Chicago by the Friends of American Art, Mar. 1–29, 1925, cat. 13.

San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Exhibition of Paintings from the Friends of American Art Collection, June 1926.

Champaign, University of Illinois, Architecture Building Gallery, American Paintings from the Permanent Collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, Dec. 3–Feb. 9, 1939.

Kalamazoo Civic Theater, Mich., Paintings from the Friends of American Art Collection, Jan.–Feb. 1945.
New York, Durlacher Brothers, Thomas W. Dewing, 1851–1938, Mar. 26–Apr. 20, 1963, cat. 14.

Publication History

Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 4 (Apr. 1911), pp. 53 (ill.), 55.

“Acquisitions,” Friends of American Art Second Year Book, 1911–1912 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1912), p. 12.

“Acquisitions,” Friends of American Art Third Year Book, 1912–1913 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1913), pp. 15, 24 (ill.).
General Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture, and Other Objects in the Museum (Art Institute of Chicago, 1913), p. 147.
“Acquisitions,” Friends of American Art Fourth Year Book, 1913–1914 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1914), pp. 17, 26 (ill.).
General Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture, and Other Objects in the Museum, 1914–1915 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1915), p. 153.
“Acquisitions,” Friends of American Art Fifth Year Book, 1914–1915, (Art Institute of Chicago, 1915), pp. 20, 58 (ill.).
“Friends of American Art Announcement” (Art Institute of Chicago, 1919).
Art Institute of Chicago Handbook on Paintings and Drawings (Art Institute of Chicago, 1920), p. 41, no. 378.
A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1925), p. 134, no. 378.
“The Art of Thomas W. Dewing,” Art and Archeology 27 (Archaeological Institute of America, 1929), p. 250.
A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1932), p. 150.
Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), p. 127.
Susan Hobbs, The Art of Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Beauty Reconfigured (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), p. 181.

Judith A. Barter et al., American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), pp. 316-17, no. 166.

Judith A. Barter et al, The Age of American Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2011), no. 69.

Ownership History

Montross Gallery, New York, 1911; sold to The Art Institute of Chicago, 1911.




View mobile website