William Merritt Chase (1849 to 1916)
In 1879, William Merritt Chase returned home to America following six years of study abroad in Munich where he had trained largely in the traditions of French realism and the Barbizon School. He returned to an American public not wholly unaware of his work; the paintings he had sent back for exhibitions during his absence had earned him both critical and popular recognition. The Art Students League in New York formalized this growing reputation by offering Chase a teaching position in 1878, which he quickly accepted. Renting a prominent space at the Tenth Street Studio Building and exhibiting his works at every opportunity, Chase continued to earn critical acclaim, most notably for his portraits and figurative paintings, while the few landscapes he attempted had more limited success. His summers were routinely spent painting in Europe, and the canvases he produced during this time focus predominantly on the European subject matter encountered during his travels, not only because it was immediately available to him, but also because it was more commercially successful in the American art market.
However, beginning in 1885, Chase began a series of views of the parks in Brooklyn which marked a notable departure from his previous work. While the choice of subject matter was without precedent among American artists at the time, these canvases were also executed in a much higher key than Chase’s traditional palette, and more dramatically structured – with strong diagonals whose directional recession opened up his compositions. As Chase himself observed, new artistic imperatives were on the horizon, and “modern conditions and trends of thought demand modern art for their expression” (“The Import of Art. By William M. Chase. An Interview with William Pach”, The Outlook 95, June 1910). By the 1880s, this siren call of modernity demanded two things: contemporary subject matter (primarily landscape) and open-air painting. Chase’s park views reflected his inimitable mastery of both, and by the late 1880′s his position as one of America’s leading en plein air painters was firmly established. Accordingly, when a group of women living on the eastern end of Long Island conceived the idea for a school focused on modern landscape and the open air painting they had glimpsed during travels abroad, Chase was the natural and obvious choice as the school’s director.
Information courtesy of Sotheby’s May, 2011.
American painter and printmaker, William Chase was a prolific painter of portraits, interiors, still lifes and landscapes, famed for establishing the fresh color and bravura technique used in much early 20th-century American painting. He was considered the most important American teacher of his time; after teaching at the Art Students League of New York he formed the Chase School of Art in 1896.
Information courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries, May 2008.