William Merritt Chase

The life of William Merritt Chase,
scene by scene

1. 1871St. Louis

   Chase grew up in Indiana, helping out in his father's shoe business. He took his first lessons from Barton Hays, a portrait painter in Indianapolis, and then studied at the National Academy of Design in New York. Afterward he joined his family in St. Louis and painted still lifes.

   There a few local businessmen made the young man an offer. They would pay for him to study in Europe. In return he would paint pictures for them and help them buy European art. In 1872 Chase used their money to enter the Royal Academy in Munich.

2. 1877Venice

   After five years in Munich, Chase headed south with two fellow Americans, the painters Frank Duveneck and John Twachtman. The three spent nine months of 1877 together in Venice.

   For most of a year they lived and painted in the same city. The next year Chase stopped briefly in Munich and then sailed for New York.

3. 1878New York

   In 1878 Chase crossed the Atlantic to teach at the Art Students League in New York.

   He rented a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building and filled it with things he had gathered in Europe: tapestries, musical instruments, old furniture, and objects from far away. For seventeen years it was his workplace, and it became a well-known meeting place for New York artists and visitors.

4. 1885London

   In the summer of 1885 Chase met James McNeill Whistler in London. Whistler, another American, was fifteen years older. The two agreed to paint each other's portraits.

   Only half of the deal survives. Chase's portrait of Whistler is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Whistler's portrait of Chase is lost.

5. 1886Boston

   Late in 1886 the Boston Art Club opened a show of Chase's work alone. The list ran to 133 pictures. It was his first solo exhibition.

   That same year, in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, he painted Alice Gerson sitting in a rowboat, her oars set down and her chin in her hand. He gave the small painting to his friend, the painter Carroll Beckwith.

   Painted around this timeAlice Gerson in Prospect Park
6. 1887Brooklyn

   In February 1887 Chase married Alice Gerson, who had often posed for his paintings. The couple settled in Brooklyn.

   Chase went out of the studio to the parks near home. He took small canvases to Prospect Park and Tompkins Park. A City Park, now in Chicago, probably shows Tompkins Park. Half of the picture is a wide, empty path.

   Painted around this timeA City Park
7. 1891Shinnecock

   In the summer of 1891 an art school opened among the sandy hills of Shinnecock, near the eastern end of Long Island. Janet Hoyt, a local resident, had invited Chase to lead a summer school for painting outdoors.

   Chase set up his easel in the open hills with his students. The school ran until 1902, and about a thousand students passed through it. The architects McKim, Mead and White designed his summer house there.

8. 1908New York

   Among Chase's students at the Art Students League was a twenty-year-old named Georgia O'Keeffe. Her painting of a dead rabbit beside a copper pot won the League's still-life scholarship for 1907–08. The League still owns that picture.

   Chase died in New York in October 1916. Besides O'Keeffe, his students included painters such as Edward Hopper and Charles Sheeler.