A Saintly Figure

In the Catholic church, November 22 is the feast day of St Cecilia, a Roman martyr and patron of music and musicians.

Since Raphael depicted her with an organ in the early 1500s, St. Cecilia can be identified in many religious artworks by her organ, harp, or other musical instrument.

How many female musicians can you find depicted in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum? Thomas Wilmer Dewing's painting The Spinet is a fine example. Because the figure is shown from behind, we can imagine she is anyone—even a saint!

From about 1905, Dewing shifted his attention from exterior to interior settings. The interiors are softly painted, tonally uniform, generalized and ambiguous; the figures are presented alone or in pairs, prominently placed in shallow space. But, however close-up, they remain essentially the same elegant, detached creatures, elusive, idealized, and contemplative. As one critic observed, "the Dewing type was intellectual enough to be worthy of Boston; aristocratic enough to be worthy of Philadelphia; well enough dressed to be a New Yorker, but seldom pretty enough to evoke the thought of Baltimore"—but always genteel enough to insulate the viewer from disturbing thoughts of the tumultuous changes that were taking place in the real world of commerce and industry.

Source: Emery Battis. American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, (artist biography exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000).

Pictured: Thomas Wilmer Dewing, 1851–1938, The Spinet, about 1902, oil on wood, 15 1/2 x 20 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly.