Tobias and the Angel

Thomas Wilmer Dewing

1887 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

Dewing produced this unusual biblical scene during his first summer in the artists’ colony of Cornish, New Hampshire. Its landscape feature, with flower-strewn fields, evokes the gentle hills and wide horizon of the rural community. Dewing’s haunting painting brings a distinctive approach to an apocryphal biblical story from the Book of Tobit, popular with French painters in the late nineteenth century. It tells of the pilgrimage of Tobit’s son, Tobias, and his angelic guardian, Raphael. The canvas retains its elaborate original frame, designed by Dewing’s close friend, the architect Stanford White.

Artist

Thomas Wilmer Dewing

Date

1887

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of Edward D. Adams, 1919