William Merritt Chase
Biography of American Impressionist Painter.
MAIN A-Z INDEX - A-Z of ARTISTS
|
William Merritt Chase
|
|
|
William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)Contents • Biography |
|
|
A noted exponent of American Impressionism, William Merritt Chase's main contribution to American art was in teaching. He was the best art teacher of his generation, and the director of the Shinnecock Hills Summer School on Long Island, the first school to offer classes in plein air painting - that is, outdoor landscape painting. He also established the Chase School, later called Parsons The New School for Design. During his teaching career Chase taught hundreds of successful artists, including: Charles Demuth (1883-1935), Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Edward Hopper (1882-1967), and Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986). Outside the classroom, he specialized mostly in portrait art but also produced numerous landscapes, interiors and still lifes. His style of Impressionism was best reflected in his landscape painting, notably his outdoor pictures of Prospect Park and Central Park (c.1886-90). Although most fluent in oil painting and pastel drawing, he was adept at watercolour painting and etching. In 1902, he became a member of The Ten American Painters, on the death of John Twachtman, one of the original group. The Ten were progressive painters who quit the National Academy of Design from 1895 onwards, due to its conservatism, and exhibited together during the period 1898-1919. In addition, Chase was elected President of the Society of American Artists (1885-95). Other Impressionist painters in America, the last three of whom were also members of The Ten, include: the pioneer Whistler (1834–1903), the leading American female Impressionist Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), the landscape painter Theodore Robinson (1852-96), the society portraitist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), the Boston master Childe Hassam (1859-1935), the sensitive and original John H Twachtman (1853-1902), and the lyrical J. Alden Weir (1852-1919). |
|
COLOURS USED IN
PAINTING WORLDS BEST PAINTERS |
|
|
|
Born into a prosperous Indiana family, Chase showed an early interest in art, and received lessons from local artists Jacob Cox and Barton Hays. At the age of 20 he went to New York where he continued his training for a short period at the National Academy of Design under Lemuel Wilmarth, a former pupil of the academic painter Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904). However, the following year he returned home to help support his family - now in St Louis, Missouri - after the collapse of the family business. Making the best of things, Chase became actively involved in the local art world. As well as winning local prizes for his painting, he also exhibited for the first time at the National Academy. In 1872, Chase's artistic talent attracted the attention of a group of wealthy St Louis art collectors who offered to finance a 2-year visit to Europe, in return for a number of paintings and assistance in acquiring modern art for their collections. Rather than the more fashionable Paris, Chase decided to work in Munich because it offered fewer distractions, and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts under Alexander von Wagner and Karl von Piloty. Here he developed a healthy respect for the drama of Rubens (1577-1640), as well as the portraiture of Frans Hals (1582-1666). In addition, he was also drawn to the looser brushwork and impasto technique of the Munich artist Wilhelm Leibl (1844-1900), a friend and follower of the French realist Gustave Courbet (1819-77), who himself had been a disciple of Dutch Realist artists. |
|
|
It was in Munich that the inquisitive and highly talented Chase began to develop his characteristic spontaneous style of painting, focusing on portraits and other forms of figure painting. In fact, he developed two differing styles. The first was his "Munich" style which lasted until the late 1880s. This was marked by dramatic chiaroscuro and a vivid use of colour pigments. From roughly 1890 onwards, under the influence of Impressionism, his palette lightened and his brushwork became bolder. In early 1876 Chase achieved his first success when one of his portraits, entitled "Keying Up" – The Court Jester (1875, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), was shown in America, at the Boston Art Club, before winning a medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. In 1877, he went to Venice with a group of American student painters organized by the Cincinnati painter Frank Duveneck, an influential figure in expatriate art circles in Munich and Italy. As well as Chase, other "Duveneck Boys" from Munich included J Frank Currier and Walter Shirlaw. These young artists were instrumental in setting up the progressive Society of American Artists in New York in 1877, in opposition to the more conservative National Academy of Design. Tenth Street Studio,
New York During the early 1880s, Chase visited Europe on several occasions to attend art exhibitions and meet other artists, including the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens - noted for his stylish mix of genre painting and portraiture. Chase was also influenced by the classicist-style Impressionism of Edouard Manet (1832-83). In 1886, he would almost certainly have studied many of the 300 paintings at the huge Impressionist exhibition held in New York by the famous French art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922). The show included works by the leading French Impressionists, including Claude Monet (1840-1926), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), Gustave Caillebotte (1848-94), Berthe Morisot (1841-95), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), and others. In 1887 he married Alice Gerson, the daughter of the director of a large lithography company, with whom he had eight children, two of whom - his daughters Alice Dieudonnee Chase and Dorothy Bremond Chase - often appeared in his paintings. Also during the second half of the 1880s, Chase began to lighten his palette and use bolder brushstrokes, a change which coincided with a series of park pictures begun when he moved to Brooklyn in 1887. He started with neighbouring Prospect Park and Tomkins Park; later he painted Central Park in Manhattan. These Impressionist landscape paintings were among the first of their kind, preceding those of Maurice Prendergast (1859-1924) by several years. According to Barbara Weinberg at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chase may have been influenced in his choice of subject, by the works of his lifelong friend John Singer Sargent, whose In the Luxembourg Gardens (1879, Philadelphia Museum of Art) was exhibited in New York during this time. Another influence may have been the expatriate James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), whose works Chase had seen in Munich and in New York. Whistler's Portrait of the Artist's Mother (1871, Musee d'Orsay, Paris), for instance, was shown at the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1881), and at the annual show of the Society of American Artists (1882). Whistler had painted London park scenes between 1872 and 1877 and may have discussed these with Chase when the two met in London in 1885. Chase's own park scenes were carefully arranged compositions of aesthetically pleasing features, including genteel, feminine activities, natural architectural features as well as innovations of landscape design by architects Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824-95). In addition to his park landscapes, Chase is also noted for his summer landscapes at Shinnecock, regarded today as his best Impressionist pictures. Ever since returning from Europe, Chase had been tirelessly active in the New York art world, being a member of virtually every organization in the city. He was also a highly successful art teacher. His main posts were at the Art Students League (1878-94) and at his own Chase School (1896-1908), both in New York, but he also taught in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and California. Furthermore, he directed the Shinnecock Summer School in a suburb of the elegant town of Southampton, on the south shore of Long Island, which became the first American school to offer organized classes in open-air painting. The school was financed by collectors who had summer homes nearby, and Chase taught there two days a week. Southampton's grand homes and wealthy residents must have had an irresistible appeal for the socially ambitious Chase, who was provided with a house and studio not far from the school. In any event, in his educational efforts, Chase ranks alongside Robert Henri (1865-1929), as the most important art teacher in America around the turn of the century. To finance his expensive habits, Chase earned a second income (in addition to his teaching) from his portraiture of New York's rich and famous. Specializing in pictures of fashionable women, he charged $2,000 for a full-length portrait during the 1890s. Examples include: Portrait of Miss Dora Wheeler (1883, Cleveland Museum of Art); Portrait of Lydia Field Emmet (1892, Detroit Institute of Arts); Portrait of a Lady in Black (Anna Traquair Lang) (1911, Philadelphia Museum of Art). In addition, Chase painted portraits of his wife and children in a variety of domestic settings. He also completed a number of self-portraits, such as Self-Portrait (1915, Terra Museum of American Art). Pictures by William Merritt Chase hang in many of the best art museums in North America. |
|
|
|
• For biographies of other American
artists, see: Famous Painters.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VISUAL ARTISTS |
