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work of the month

William Merritt Chase
American (1849-1916)
Still Life, ca. 1900-1905
Oil on Panel
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.

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William Merritt Chase advised his numerous students over his career to paint the commonplace in such a way as to make it distinguished. As you look closely at Chase’s work here, in what ways do you feel Chase has distinguished his subject? What are some of the reasons you believe Chase might have enjoyed painting still life with dead fish or other everyday objects on first glance?

By the late nineteenth century, William Merritt Chase enjoyed a celebrated reputation as both an artist and teacher. Barbara Gallati has noted that with his debonair attire, beard, monocle, and Russian wolfhound, Chase became a symbol of the new era in American culture. His paintings reflected this new spirit as well. Chase was formally trained in Munich, acquired a love for Spanish painting, especially Velázquez, enjoyed the vitality of Sargent and Fortuny, the realism of Manet, the decorative arrangements of Whistler, and the light of the Impressionists. These influences are evident throughout his long career as an artist, and he has been attributed with the distinction of having “profoundly influenced the direction of late nineteenth century American painting toward an amalgam technique of bravura brushwork and the bright, sunlit palette of the French Impressionists.”

Now that you have more information about Chase and what types of painting influenced him, can you find any of these influences in the Chrysler’s still life?

HERE ARE SOME CLUES:

• What color is the background of the painting?
• What effect does the background have as compared with the color
  or light on the fish in the picture?
• Has Chase done anything in the arrangement of objects in the work
  or in treating the texture of his subjects that reminds you of other
  painters or styles?

William Merritt Chase’s paintings focussed on many subjects throughout his career including portraiture, landscape and genre, in addition to still life. Late in his career, his still life paintings, especially of dead fish, became enormously popular with early twentieth century audiences. Chase particularly enjoyed working with this subject and genre.

• What do you think Chase enjoyed about working with dead fish?
  Other everyday objects?
• Why do you think these pictures were popular with the public,
  or good for Chase to explore as an art teacher?
• When you look at the treatment of objects, composition, color, and
  light in this painting, do you feel the artist was successful in
  painting the commonplace in such a way as to make it
  distinguished?

After you have contemplated your answers consider what William Merritt Chase says about his love of still life with fish subjects.

“I enjoy painting fishes; in the infinite variety of these creatures, the subtle and exquisitely colored tones of the flesh fresh from the water, the way their surfaces reflect the light, I take the greatest pleasure. In painting a good composition of fish I am painting for myself. . .”

Do you agree with the nineteenth century collector, critic, and founder of the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. when he says of Chase’s overall contribution to art and taste: “he deserves to be long remembered for his influence on the development of taste in the Unites States during the period when we were acquiring some of the artistic sagacity of Europe”? In what ways has Chase successfully distilled earlier European styles and techniques to influence a uniquely American style of painting in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

John S. Welch

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barbara Gallati. William Merritt Chase (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995).

Dianne Pilgrim. American Impressionist and Realist Paintings and Drawings (ex. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1973).

Stephen May, “Chase History”, ArtNews v. 94, November 1995, p. 94.

Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., “William Merritt Chase at Shinnecock Hills”, Antiques, August, 1987, pp. 290-303.

 

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TIMELINE

1849 William Merritt Chase born November1, in Williamsburg, Indiana, to David Hester and Sarah Swaim Chase

1872 Summers in London and Paris; enrolls at Royal Academy, Munich. Rooms with Walter Shirlaw and later Frank Duveneck. Studies with Alexander von Wagner.

1878 Exhibits Society of American Artists (SAA). Accepts teaching position at Art Students League, NY. Rents space Tenth Street Studio Building. Joins the Tile Club.

1881 Visits Antwerp and Madrid (studies Velázquez).

1885 Paints portrait of Whistler in London. Elected President of SAA.

1886 Marries Alice Gerson.

1891 Shinnecock Hills Summer School founded; first of twelve consecutive summer sessions held.

1898 Chase relinquishes administrative role at Chase School of Art, which is renamed the New York School of Art (parent institution of Parsons School of Design).

1902 Closes Shinnecock School.

1905 Conducts summer classes in Spain; joins The Ten.

1916 Dies at Fifteenth Street home October 15 after rapid decline in the course
of lingering ailment (possibly liver cancer); buried in Green-Wood Cemetary, Brooklyn.