ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY 
ventionally good-looking, but they 
have an indefinable charm of woman¬ 
hood. This physical tenuity, this slight 
homeliness is the dissonance which ap¬ 
pears in certain chords in music. Were 
his women prettier in the usual sense, 
we should find ourselves disillusioned 
and the spell broken. He has painted 
women out of doors; he has produced 
decorations and murals; but in all his 
work there is an instinct for beauty 
which lends charm to anything to 
which he has given his attention. And 
we feel in his art what he once, with wit, 
remarked of another painter’s picture: 
“The work is just sour enough to save 
it!” 
It is, I think, obvious why Freer 
found in Dewing the qualities that link 
his work with the best Oriental art. In 
the artistic expression of the Eastern 
people, abstract and subjective design 
begins with the actual in nature and 
ends in ideal elaboration of form and 
color. In many Japanese prints, par¬ 
ticularly those of the aristocratic Yei- 
shi, there is an elegance and delicacy 
to which Dewing’s painting is closely 
allied. In his work the keen apprecia¬ 
tion of rhythmic line, the sense of 
balance of spaces, would alone admit 
its kinship with much of the pictorial 
art of China and Japan. The sim¬ 
plicity of the compositions, the move¬ 
ment of the draperies, the exquisite 
representation of accessories in so many 
of his pictures recall the spirit of the 
finest prints. The color in Dewing’s 
finest prints. The color in Dewing’s pic¬ 
tures harmonizes with the best Oriental 
potteries and porcelains. A proof of 
this is to live with a painting by Dewing 
placed amid such surrounding. That 
anyone should fail to see why Freer 
placed Dewing among the Oriental 
artists would seem to indicate a blind¬ 
ness to the significance of the combina¬ 
tion of strength and refinement, of 
realism and idealization, of Eastern art. 
Dewing is perhaps best known by his 
work in oil. In this medium he has de¬ 
veloped an individual technique which 
is conspicuously well adapted to his ex¬ 
pression. The surfaces of his pictures 
have a precious, jewel-like color— 
quality which reminds one of some 
rare Chinese porcelain. He has been 
alive to the charm of accident which, 
when significant, he has left untouched. 
All is done with apparent freedom and 
abandon. The harmony of color is as 
consistent as a theme in music, ap¬ 
pearing and reappearing. His com¬ 
positions have a seemingly accidental 
rhythm which is never obvious. His 
pictures well fulfill Whistler’s require¬ 
ment that “work should efface the foot¬ 
steps of work ’ ’; for they appear to have 
been breathed on the canvas at the 
moment of supreme vision. 
One can hardly realize the great labor 
and exercise of discrimination which go 
into the production of one of Dewing’s 
pictures. In the collection of the Freer 
gallery in Washington, and in the ex¬ 
amples owned by Mr. John Gellatly of 
New York, the diversity surprises you 
in the work of an artist who is usually 
considered an extreme specialist. In 
Mr. Gellatly’s collection there is a 
painting of a woman’s head which is 
marvelous in its poetic suggestion of 
delicate nobility. The Freer collection 
contains an embarrassment of riches. 
There is a portrait of a young woman 
seated in a Roman curule chair. This 
picture momentarily recalls the old 
Italian portraits in its simple mastery of 
form and its rare color-notes. The 
flesh-tones are those of a tea-rose; the 
velvet of the dress has suggestions of 
an iris purple. The hands folded in the 
lap are painted with magic skill, and 
the whole picture is enveloped in a soft 
[2S9] 
