Existing comment:
The Piano
Thomas Dewing (American, 1851–1938)
United States, 1891
Oil on wood panel
H x W: 50.8 x 67.5 cm
Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1906.66
Originally titled The Musician, this painting is the first of several works by Dewing that suggest a connection among music, reverie, and aesthetic attention. It depicts the model Minnie Clark seated before a piano in an otherwise empty room. Her brunette hair, black dress, and massive dark piano contrast sharply with the opalescent green of the interior. Thinly painted areas in various tones of green balance the visual weight of the piano and the female figure on the right. The skewed perspective is tilted in the manner of the Japanese prints that Dewing admired and collected. As a result, the illusionistic rendering of space is attenuated, reduced to a flickering violet shadow at the right and a few saturated strokes of greenish blue pigment at the lower left. Both of these passages suggest where the floor and wall meet, but they also function as chromatically significant surface details. Such emphasis on a decorative rendering of space recalls the atmospheric style of James McNeill Whistler, to whom Dewing's paintings and pastels were often compared by contemporary critics and collectors. |