William was an importer, and was also interested in the arts, Sally was a cultured woman and writer who came from a wealthy family from Boston.

[6] She first attended the Cooper Union School of Design in 1866, studying there until 1870[6] with William Rimmer, Edwin Forbes, Robert Swain Gifford and George Edmund Butler.

[4] From 1871 to 1875 she studied at the Antique School of National Academy of Fine Arts,[6] during which time she shared an apartment with de Kay[4] and took painting lessons from the painter John La Farge.

He specialized in Japanese aesthetics and was said by Dewing to have created paintings that were "the most beautiful in all the world" and greatly influenced her own work.

[4] The same year her works were exhibited at a show organized in New York by La Farge and she studied with landscape artist William Morris Hunt and in 1876 with Thomas Couture.

"[6] It is also possible that she changed in order to focus her artistic effort in a different direction[10] Dewing created embroidered applique pieces that were like tapestries in the early 1880s.

In her lifetime, her works were compared to French painters Antoine Vollon, Henri Fantin-Latour and John La Farge.

[4] Wistful that as a wife of a successful figure painter she had not realized her full potential, Dewing said in the later years of her career, "I have hardly touched any achievement...

[4] Her works included the following, written from the perspective of an artist:[4] Maria Oakey Dewing died on December 13, 1927, in the same city where her life began.