Painter. Maria Oakley Dewing, an American artist, received recognition for her depiction of flowers. Loving gardening, she knew each delicate flower and painted a "worm's-eye view" of flowers. Besides her iris, poppies, roses, foxgloves, peonies, and lilies, she also painted portraits and a few still lifes. She was the wife of Thomas Wilmer Dewing, who was a member of the group of Impressionist artists called "The Ten." Born the fifth child of ten, her father was in the import business and her mother's family was cultured and wealthy. She started to paint at age seventeen. She attended a private college in New York City, the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, from 1866 to 1870. From 1871 to 1875 she studied at the Antique School of National Academy of Fine Arts in New York City. She became interested in Asian paintings, studying under John La Farge. Her paintings could be described as having an Asian touch. Becoming a recognized artist, her paintings had a broad, vigorous brush work, and rich, glowing color and were exhibited at the National Academy of Design. In 1875 she exhibited her paintings alongside La Farge's. The same year, she joined with the group of artists who established the Art Students League of New York, which has become renowned for its art. At this point she studied landscape painting under American artist William Morris Hunt and in 1876 at Villiers-le-Bel, France with Thomas Courture, who had taught LaFarge along with members of "The Ten." At the age of 36, she married Dewing on April 18, 1881, and at the time, he was not a well-established artist. The couple had a son, who died as an infant, and a daughter. After her marriage, she felt that she was competing with her husband, thus her interest in painting declined as she focused on being a wife and a mother. When she did paint, she chose subjects that her husband would not paint, such as flowers. She did collaborate with her husband, completing floral settings as the background for his portraits, yet only the 1886 painting the "Hymen," which is exhibited at the Cincinnati Art Museum in Ohio, credits both of the artists. From 1885 to 1905, she and her husband spent the summer in their home, the "Doveridge," at an artists' colony in Cornish, New Hampshire. Leaving the colony in 1905 the couple purchased a large plot of land in the White Mountains. Becoming a plein air painter, she had a flower garden, learning the anatomy of the flower for her art pieces. She did intense studies of botany, to the point of becoming an amateur botanist. Standing full-view with her back to the artist and looking over her right shoulder, she was the model for her husband's 1887 painting, "Woman in Black." In her later years, she expressed her regrets in not continuing to paint as she knew she had the talent. In 1907, she had a one-woman show at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and in 1914, a one-woman show at Knoedler & Company in New York City. In a time when women were not allowed to study in the same art classes as men, she excelled as an artist. As a young woman, she published articles and books on etiquette and housekeeping, and later in life, she wrote art articles for magazines. Besides pieces being in private collections, her 1895 "Garden in May", an oil-on-canvas, is part of the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.; "The Rose" is on display at the Taubman Museum of Art in Maine; her 1900 "Rose and Calla Lilies" is on exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Art, her "Rose Garden" is on display at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas; and "Iris at Dawn" is on exhibit at Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Although her paintings usually sell easily for thousands of dollars, one of her many rose paintings sold in the 21 st century at Sotheby's Auction House in New York between $2,000,000 to $3,000,000.