An American painter, Schooled in Paris, working at the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851 - 1938), provided fixed points of truth and beauty for a generation eventually inย fear of the great changes in American culture wrought by immigration, industrialization, and urbanization.ย The Dewingโs, despite modest circumstances, descended from one of the first families of seventeenth-century New England.ย The promise of his talent allowed Dewing to study at the Lowell Institute, in his native Boston, before travelling to Paris, where he enrolled at the Acadรฉmie Julian in 1876.ย Returning to Boston, he taught at the newly opened Museum School at the Museum of Fine Arts before moving, like so many writers and artists of his generation, to New York City.ย Living in New York, Dewing sought refuge from the vicissitudes of his new environment by returning annually, from 1885 to 1905, to the artistsโs colony at Cornish, New Hampshire, pursuing aย "higher road to enlightenment", through art, music, and literature.ย Dewing and his friends believed that the role of art was toย "suggest emotions or recall โฆ memories of past experiences, of love, poetic thought โฆโย (Hobbs, Beauty Reconfigured, 1996).ย Dewing continued to paint into the early years of the twentieth century with the support of railroad-car manufacturer Charles Lang Freer and insurance magnate John Gellatly, who both, by having left their extensive collections to the Smithsonian Institution, allowed for us today to relive Thomas Wilmer Dewingโs artistic pathย
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