Maria Oakey Dewing

Maria Oakey Dewing (1845–1927), Rose Garden, 1901
Oil on canvas, 24 × 40 1/2 in. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. 2006.67.

“It is easy to write, it is almost impossible to paint,” declared a seventeen-year-old Maria Oakey Dewing. Nevertheless, Dewing spent the rest of her life deeply committed to painting. Rose Garden was painted during the last summer she and her husband, artist Thomas Wilmer Dewing, spent in the rural artist colony of Cornish, New Hampshire, escaping the daily grind of the city. The way the flowers extend to the edge of the frame places the viewer in the thick of the garden with the artist.