Thomas Wilmer Dewing began creating decorative paintings of women in interiors around 1886, using this subject to explore formal qualities of color and composition. Like the painter James McNeill Whistler, he was especially concerned with rendering subtle distinctions of hue and value. Although the sitters in Dewing’s interiors were intended to be anonymous, many of them were recognizable to contemporary viewers as his friends or lovers. The woman depicted in Lady in Green and Gray is Gertrude McNeill, an actress who frequently posed for the artist between 1911 and 1917.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 4 (Apr. 1911), 53 (ill.), 55.
“Acquisitions,” Friends of American Art Second Year Book, 1911–1912 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1912), 12.
“Acquisitions,” Friends of American Art Third Year Book, 1912–1913 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1913), 15, 24 (ill.).
General Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture, and Other Objects in the Museum (Art Institute of Chicago, 1913), 147.
“Acquisitions,” Friends of American Art Fourth Year Book, 1913–1914 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1914), 17, 26 (ill.).
General Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture, and Other Objects in the Museum, 1914–1915 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1915), 153.
“Acquisitions,” Friends of American Art Fifth Year Book, 1914–1915, (Art Institute of Chicago, 1915), 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), 41, no. 378.
A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1925), 134, no. 378.
“The Art of Thomas W. Dewing,” Art and Archeology 27 (Archaeological Institute of America, 1929), 250.
A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1932), 150.
Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), 127.
Susan Hobbs, The Art of Thomas Wilmer Dewing: Beauty Reconfigured (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 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), 316–17, no. 166.
Judith A. Barter, et al., The Age of American Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2011), cat. 69.
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.
California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Exhibition of Paintings: Collection of the Friends of American Art lent by the Art Institute of Chicago, June 26–July 26, 1926, no. 6.
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, Michigan, 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.
Montross Gallery, New York, 1911; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1911.
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