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William Merritt Chase

Still Life with Brass Bowl, about 1903

oil on canvas

20 x 24 inches

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.

For Chase, still-life was a welcome change from the requirements of portraiture and an opportunity to address a subject for the pure pleasure of painting.  He was particularly fond of juxtaposing different materials in his still-life subjects.  In this composition the textures of the wooden box, porcelain cup, silver spoon, Japanese figurine, flowers, and glass enabled the artist to turn his painterly technique on the varied objects he surrounded himself with in his studio.  Chase’s treatment embodies the advice he offered his students to “paint the commonplace in such a way as to make it distinguished.”

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