William Merritt Chase 1849-1916

As he was in his lifetime, William Merritt Chase is recognized as one of the foremost American artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Celebrated for an eclectic body of work that cuts across subject matter, technique, and media, he was also a revered and influential teacher. Chase prized his artistic versatility and actively cultivated a flamboyant public persona that complemented the astonishing flexibility with which he shifted from one style to another.

As a young man Chase studied briefly at the National Academy of Design school, befriending two of his classmates, J. Alden Weir, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. He trained in earnest, however, at the Royal Munich Academy from 1872 until 1877. The school was noted for its robust, direct painting technique, eschewing preparatory drawings. Paintings were started on blank unprimed canvas, and completed, some say, in record time—at least Chase had the reputation of painting fast. Chase was also recognized as having a prodigious talent—clearly one of the outstanding students at the Royal Munich Academy. The art of alla prima painting taught at the Academy tended to be dark in tonality. Whatever the reason, be it an attempt at gravitas or an emphasis on muted tones to convey form, the “Munich look” was somewhat somber, but the brush work was dynamic. 

When Chase returned to the United States in 1878, he secured the premier space in the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. Change was in the air—the young, newly returned artists from their studies in Europe were out to make their mark on the American art scene. And that required a new way of painting—the Hudson River School was on the decline, and during the 1880s a new American approach was slowly evolving. That new school was based partly on French Impressionism—however, the American version, while adopting the lighter palette of the French, was more controlled in its approach, less concerned with dissolved line and vague impressionist image. Certainly, Chase was at the forefront of this new American school. His palette became lighter and more accessible; his subject matter, for example depicting the city parks of Brooklyn and New York City, was seen as new and different and “modern,” a critic of the day writing that Chase “…had the eyes to see beauty in the commonplace—at last an American artist painting America.” He would also exhibit sketches which was considered daring at the time. Clearly Chase was leading the way to establishing a new and evolving American style of art-making which combined emphasis on process as well as contemporary subject matter.