# Young Girl Seated

- By: Thomas Wilmer Dewing (born Boston, MA 1851-died New York City 1938)
- Date: 1896
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Classification: Paintings
- Dimensions: 20 1/8 x 16 1/8 in. (51.1 x 40.9 cm)
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=6782)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/caa8bfe8662aaf7f2e2d3a58962baa9c.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Thomas Wilmer Dewing painted many images of young, elegant women who gaze away from the viewer as if lost in thought. The delicate brushstrokes in this painting emphasize the soft, gauzy material of the girl’s dress, and her skin appears pale against the dark background, creating a sense of fragility and tenderness. Dewing was surrounded by strong women—his wife was an artist and suffragist and his daughter was “headstrong”—and his idyllic images of ladies at leisure suggest that he was responding to the changing role of women at the turn of the twentieth century. (Hobbs, Beauty Reconfigured, 1996)