A Reading (or Woman in Windsor Chair)
Thomas Wilmer Dewing
American, 1851–1938

Details
Title
A Reading (or Woman in Windsor Chair)
Artist/Maker
Thomas Wilmer Dewing (American, 1851–1938)
Date
ca. 1909
Medium
Oil on linen
Dimensions
20 1/4 x 21 1/2 inches
Credit
Purchase with funds from The Sara Giles Moore Foundation in memory of Sara Giles Moore
Accession #
2017.27
In this painting, a woman drifts off into thought, a book held loosely in hand. A harmonious, subtle palette and the sitter’s elegant calm set a contemplative mood. Dewing avoids the limiting structure of narrative depiction and offers little context or explanation. Yet while the nondescript setting and model’s breezy styling lend a timeless effect, Dewing’s quotation of Renaissance portrait conventions, layered with the classically styled figure seated in a Colonial Windsor chair, announces his full embrace of aestheticism’s modern, cosmopolitan outlook.
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