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The artist captures the low and rolling, flat terrain of the Shinnecock countryside, with its occasional tree, sand dunes, and dwarfed bushes.

Chase established America's first summer school of art at Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, where he painted some of his most Impressionist landscapes.

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William Merritt Chase

First Touch of Autumn, about 1898

oil on canvas

40 1/8 x 50 1/8 in.

Gift of Peter C. Reilly and Dr. Jeanette P. Reilly

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Hoosier native William Merritt Chase trained at the Royal Academy in Munich before settling in New York City. He maintained a summer home and studio at Shinnecock Hills on the eastern end of Long Island, where in 1891 he established America’s first summer school of art. In these classes and in his own artistic production of this period, Chase focused primarily on painting out of doors. Some of Chase’s finest and most impressionistic landscapes were painted during his summer sojourns at Shinnecock.

Although Chase often included his family in his tranquil Shinnecock scenes, in First Touch of Autumn the artist presents an expansive view of the landscape. The Shinnecock countryside is low and rolling, its flat terrain broken only by an ocean tree, sand dunes and dwarfed bushes. Chase captured the vastness of this lowland country as it stretches toward the sea under a cloudless blue sky.

Reference

Ronald G. Pisano and Carol K Lane.  William Merritt Chase: Landscapes in Oil, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN-13: 978-0300110203