William Merritt Chase

Study of a Young Woman, mid-1880s

oil on canvas

32 x 25 in.

Gift of Mrs. John N. Carey

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A native of Indiana, Chase studied first in Indianapolis and then in Munich, where he shared a studio with Frank Duveneck.  Like Duveneck, he outgrew the limitations of the Leibl School in the 1880s, but retained an allegiance to the black tones of Frans Hals and Edouard Manet.  Much of his work from this period consists of casual studies.

There is no evidence to support the traditional title A Spanish Girl or the date 1896, when Chase paid his third visit to Spain.  In fact, the dress was common in the United States during the 1880s.  Moreover, the style is typical of Chase’s work from around the middle of that decade, which was highly influenced by the dark tonalities of his Munich period.  The canvas is painted in broad, straight brushstrokes which have the panache but lack the subtlety of his mature technique.  The painting nevertheless has the liveliness of his best informal portraits.  Like many other American artists of the period, Chase was at his best painting young women, whose beauty he captured and even flattered with his technique. Curiously enough, he endowed most of them, including this sitter, with the features of his wife whom he married in 1887, who provided an ideal of femininity that lasted unabated until his death.

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