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William Merritt Chase

After the Shower, about 1885-1889

oil on canvas

15 ½ x 23 ½ in.

John Herron Fund

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William Merritt Chase was born in Ninevah, Indiana and studied under Barton Hayes in Indianapolis and then briefly at the National Academy of Design.  Due to the interest and generosity of several art patrons, Chase was able to take a five-year trip to Munich, where he studied at the city’s Royal Academy.  In 1878, Chase returned to New York City, opened his Tenth Street Studio and developed his signature impressionist style.  He was a member of America’s influential group of impressionists known as The Ten, but was also an extremely influential teacher.  Chase opened the first summer school of landscape painting at his summer home in Shinnecock, Long Island.  He also taught at the Chase School in New York, which he founded, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  His students included such famous artists as Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe and Charles Sheeler. 

In After the Shower, Chase relies on techniques he learned at the Royal Academy in Munich and from Munich-based American painters such as Frank Duveneck.  The broad brushwork and massing of lights and darks suggest his German training, although the composition and color show the impact of the French Barbizon painters.  Yet this painting is just one chromatic step from Impressionism.  Chase painted it shortly before turning to the light-filled style on which his reputation as a landscape painter is based.  The canvas was probably executed in New York, near Chase’s Shinnecock Hills studio, as suggested by the landscape’s earlier more descriptive title, Long Island, After a Shower of Rain. 

Reference

Ronald G. Pisano.  William Merritt Chase: The Complete Catalogue of Known and Documents Work by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), Vol. 2: Portraits in Oil, New Haven Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007.  ISBN-13: 978-0300110210