Dewing+Piano

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 * [[image:Picture_001.jpg width="310" height="239"]][[image:Picture_002.jpg width="292" height="237"]] || Title: Steinway Concert Grand Piano

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Gallery Chat for Thomas Dewing, Decoration on the Lid of a Piano, 1903 by Lee Glazer In the spring of 1904, the Detroit industrialist and art collector Charles Lang Freer made a five-day trip to New York, where he took in the annual exhibition of the Ten American Painters at the Durand-Ruel Gallery. He was particularly impressed by a decorated piano lid, the only submission by Thomas Dewing, and writing to fellow-collector John Gellatly a few days later, Freer declared, "I think the piano cover...is the finest thing Dewing has ever done, embracing the finest qualities of all his earlier things."

The painting is not actually one of Dewing's best, but it certainly echoes his earlier "decorations," the word he used to distinguish his large scale figures in the landscape from the smaller studio pictures of figures in interiors. The obscurely depicted allegory of "Columbia Receiving the Nine Muses" depicted here certainly refers back to the lush Cornish landscapes that Dewing had painting through the 1890s, examples of which were owned by both Freer and Gellatly.

Dewing had executed the painting as part of a larger commission from Steinway & Sons in 1902, when he undertook the task of gilding and decorating the case of a commemorative piano-- serial number 100,000-- that the piano manufacturing firm presented to the Theodore Roosevelt White House in January 1903. Dewing completed the case in time for its White House debut, but continued to work on the lid through the following year. After exhibiting the decoration with the Ten, Dewing sent it to Washington where it was hinged onto the piano.

For the next 35 years, the gold Steinway was the star attraction on White House tours and the instrument of choice for White House concerts. Although Dewing would complain to Charles Freer that his refined decorations were unappreciated by President Roosevelt, the piano was Dewing's single most lucrative commission (he was paid $7,000) and the most publicized. During the 1930s, the instrument, along with Dewing's reputation, faded from view. The piano left the White House in 1938 (replaced by an Art Deco model) and became part of the Smithsonian's collections. It was first displayed in the Rotunda galleries of what is now the National Museum of Natural History; then, with the opening of the National Museum of American Art in 1964, it became a prop for the exhibition of First Ladies' Gowns. Placed behind Mamie Eisenhower and Jackie Kennedy, detached from its period context, the Dewing piano could not even signify the conspicuous consumption of the Gilded Age; it became an accessory to feminine fashion.

In the mid 1990s, Smithsonian conservators carried out a major restoration project on the piano, and while it is still part of the NMAH collections, it is on loan here at SAAM, where it can once again take its place in the context of Dewing's oeuvre and Gilded Age aesthetics.

About Art Case Pianos An outgrowth of the Aesthetic Movement, art case pianos were too expensive for the middle class market, but were popular with industrialists and other rich aesthetes in the years following the economic crises of the early 1890s. In fact, Steinway & Sons established a special art department in 1897, under the direction of Joseph Burr Tiffany. Tiffany, whose early training came from the family design firm Tiffany & Company left his design business in Washington, DC to oversee Steinway's team of in-house painters, sculptors, and decorators. He coordinated special commissions to individual artists and design firms such as Herter Brothers, Cottier, and Tiffany, and during his tenure, (which ended with his retirement in 1912), Steinway's Art Department produced elaborate, one-of-a-kind pianos for such Gilded Age personalities as Cornelius Vanderbilt, F.W. Woolworth, and Stanford White. Many of the Art Department pianos, however, were exhibition pieces, designed to attract attention and highlight the "artistic quality" of the Steinway brance. It was in this context that Tiffany-- also the musical booking agent for the White House-- suggested that a grand piano would be just the thing for the East Room, which was part of a major remodeling of the White House under the direction of Tiffany's friend and colleague, the New York architect Charles McKim.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Initially, Edith Roosevelt wanted a simple upright piano, but by the spring of 1902, the First Family had accepted Steinway's offer of a more prominent instrument: a full-size concert grand in an "extra-fancy," full gilded, and uniquely decorated case. Dewing, who had helped with the interior decoration of several houses, including Charles Freer's Detroit home, executes the gilding, which is variously tones, with a cool, greenish gold on the lid and a warmer gold on the case. The decorative scheme, in keeping with the President's request for something "national in conception" includes massive bald eagle legs, carved by Steinway & Sons artisan Juan Ayuso and a continuous acanthus scroll linking panels depicting coats of arms of the 13 colonies, painted by Thomas Dewing and his wife, Maria Oakey Dewing.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The decorated lid continues the nationalist theme, if obliquely. According to period accounts, Dewing's dancing figures represent the nine Muses, received by Columbia, the seated figure on the left. The decoration, then, establishes a relationship between the arts and national identity, a common theme at the turn of the century, and often invoked to signify American cultural progress and power, but subsumed here by Dewing's signature style, which was understood by contemporary critics to be poetic and ultra-refined, without specific anecdotal content. The representations were understood to refer not so much to real life references as to the more self-referential language of art.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Eye Level: Don't Miss Thes <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Steinway Concert Grand Piano
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