Portrait of a Lady

"Art is nothing more than the shadow of humanity." —Henry James

Literary great Henry James was born in New York on this day in 1843, though he spent much of his life in Europe. Frequently writing about class and cultural distinctions between Europeans and Americans, James's masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady, was published in 1881.

Thomas Wilmer Dewing's Lady in White (No. 1) exudes a Jamesian air.

A slender, elegant woman sits in a chair, eyes half-closed in a moment of silent reverie. The interior is bare and the mirror reflects nothing, giving us little clue to the woman's thoughts. Dewing often portrayed such refined women at leisure as the Victorian ideal of femininity.

See Lady in White in our traveling exhibition American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, New Jersey, until May 20, 2001.

Source: Joann Moser. American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Thomas Wilmer Dewing, 1851–1938, Lady in White (No. 1), about 1910, oil, 26 1/4 x 20 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gallatly.