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, whose work he certainly would have known, Dewing was especially concerned with rendering subtle distinctions of hue and value. Although the sitters were intended to be anonymous, many of them have been identified as his friends or lovers. The woman depicted in Lady in Green and Gray is Gertrude MacNeill, an actress who frequently posed for Dewing between 1911 and 1917.
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/Yale University Press, 2011), no. 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, Jun 26–Jul 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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