William Merritt Chase

Portrait of My Father, David H. Chase, 1895

oil on canvas

24 ¼ x 18 ¼ inches

Gift of Mrs. Carrie Chase Roberts

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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.

By 1895, when Chase painted this portrait of his father, he was well established as one of America’s leading artists and teachers.  David Hester Chase must have looked back on his son’s professional life with both pride and amusement.  Young Chase was first employed in his father’s Indianapolis shoe store in the late 1860s.  An unenthusiastic salesman, Chase often passed his time drawing on wrapping paper and shoe boxes.  Despite his doubts about his son’s financial prospects as an artist, and his own monetary difficulties, Mr. Chase introduced his son to local painter Barton Hays and paid $20 a month for his son’s instruction.  Many lessons and many portraits later, Chase used bold, animated brushstrokes against a dark background to render this straightforward likeness of his father. 

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