Merry Month of May
May brings flowers and chirping birds to mind for most people, but Mother Nature—and art—are full of surprises. 
Merry Month of May
May brings flowers and chirping birds to mind for most people, but Mother Nature—and art—are full of surprises.
Maria Oakey Dewing, the wife of painter Thomas Wilmer Dewing, loved cultivating flowers, and she often painted floral scenes from the perspective of a kneeling gardener. The artist successfully combined her horticultural interest with a poetic sensitivity to capture the freshness and vitality of flowers. Garden in May was painted outdoors near Dewing's summer home in the artists' colony at Cornish, New Hampshire.
May Snow, by Torvald Arnst Hoyer, contrasts with the traditional representation of spring in Garden in May.
Pictured top: Maria Oakey Dewing, 1845–1927, Garden in May, 1895, oil, 23 5/8 x 32 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly.
Source: Joann Moser. American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).
Pictured bottom: Torvald Arnst Hoyer, 1872 Denmark–1949 USA, May Snow, 1937, oil, 30 x 24 in., Museum acquisition.