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Alma
Thomas Wilmer Dewing (born Boston, MA 1851-died New York City 1938)
ca. 1895-1900
- Medium
- oil on wood
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 20 x 15 5/8 in. (50.7 x 39.6 cm.)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Thomas Wilmer Dewing fancied intellectual, witty women and once wrote that all he ever required of his models was that they have “brains”; his wife, Maria, believed his favorite types of women possessed a “delicacy of form” that amplified their spirituality and intellect. Alma Allen was one such model, and in this portrait Dewing emphasized these traits by focusing on her long neck and pensive expression, rather than the curves of her body or the texture of her dress. (Pyne, Art and the Higher Life: Painting and Evolutionary Thought in Nineteenth-century America, 1996)
