Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s dreamlike settings stand in stark contrast to the newly industrialized, gritty environment of late nineteenth-century America. Inspired by the work of James McNeill Whistler, Asian design, and music,
Dewing believed that the purpose of the artist is to “see beautifully.” While slender birches sway in measured counterpoint and delicate harp music fills the air, four elegant young women perform a stately arabesque
across the canvas, their glowing evening gowns a graceful beat of muted gold, rose, brown, pink, and red. Dewing’s friend the architect Stanford White made the decorative frame.
