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This painting represents the cosmopolitan aesthetic of Chase’s art and lifestyle. It celebrates the Indiana native’s financial and critical success upon his return to the United States in 1878 from six years of study and travel in Europe. Chase first rented a first-floor studio in the Tenth Street Building; within a year, he was able to acquire a much larger space, formerly that of the Hudson River School artist Albert Bierstadt. Here Chase was able to realize his dream of a large, richly decorated studio such as European artists had, where he could work, teach, entertain clients, and transact business. His Saturday receptions soon became celebrated events. The studio itself became the subject of numerous paintings and photographs not only by Chase, but by his fellow artists and students.
This painting depicts a section of the west wall of Chase’s “inner” studio, which, in the days when the Hudson River School artists dominated the Tenth Street Studio Building, had been a group exhibition space. Later, the artist Albert Bierstadt used it to display his massive canvasses. The inner studio was indeed much larger than the main studio, Chase’s workspace. In this depiction, a young woman is seated, holding a Japanese woodblock print and surrounded by Chase’s collection of “bric-a-brac,” a varied assortment of objects from around the world. Chase was an inveterate collector, indifferent to cost in the pursuit of acquisition, and he bought many of his things on his frequent travels to Europe that he then sent back to New York. As evidence of his active and varied collection practices, when Chase had to sell the contents of his studio at an auction in 1896, the items were sorted into twenty-five categories.
The sitter in Reynolda’s painting is an attractive young woman with fair hair arranged into bangs and loose ringlets framing her face, with a headband of white ribbon. She is dressed in a white satin directoire-style gown, probably a studio prop of Chase’s as there are other paintings of different sitters wearing a similar dress. She is seated in a swivel chair, having casually tossed her pink bonnet onto the plush pile rug under her feet. [2] She wears soft black suede mitts and a simple gold band on the pinkie finger of her left hand. She crosses her legs, slightly lifting the skirt of her dress and revealing slender ankles and dainty feet. Her lively and alert manner is suggested by her expression; she looks at the viewer directly, as if having only just been interrupted in her perusal of a Japanese print. The interruption does not seem unwelcome, as her gaze makes the viewer implicitly welcome into the fascinating ambience of the studio.
Many items from Reynolda’s painting can be spotted in other paintings Chase completed in his studio, such as Interior of the Artist’s Studio, 1880, and Tenth Street Studio, after 1895. These items include the ornately carved Italian Renaissance chest, the rondo bas relief, the hanging incense burner, the bronze Japanese figurine, and the Italianate bust. [3] The particular compositional cropping and arrangement of objects mirror exactly the room arrangement in a photograph William Merritt Chase in his Tenth Street studio, mimicking the pose of his wife as seen in the pastel Meditation hanging on wall behind him. The photo is given a circa date of 1895, more than a decade after the date of Reynolda House’s painting, making the identical placement of objects more problematic, but the similarity is striking.
The painting is on a canvas that was commercially prepared with a ground layer of thick white from P.J. Ulrich’s Artist Materials, 12th & 4th Avenues, New York. Chase mixed linseed or another type of drying oil with his oil paints, or thinned his paint with turpentine, allowing for wash-like effects of paint application on the surface. [4] Stylistically, Chase was lightening his palette from the darker tonality of his Munich training and Old Masters, but the lighting is still generalized and, although painterly, his brushwork and palette are not yet as impressionistic as he would become in later years.
The identity of the sitter remains unknown. When the painting was acquired for Reynolda House’s inaugural art collection in 1967, it bore the title Dorothy Chase in the Studio, c. 1905. However both style and subject of the painting place it in the period from 1880 to 1885. In addition, Chase’s daughter Dorothy, dark haired like her mother Alice Gerson Chase, was not born until 1891, so the sitter could not be her or any other of Chase’s daughters. Chase experts and art historians Ronald Pisano and Annette Blaugrund suggested that she might be the “well-known contemporary beauty Harriet Hubbard Ayer,” a former student of Chase whose portrait he had painted earlier in 1879 and 1880. [5] Yet in photographic likeness and Chase’s other paintings of Ayer, the shape of her face and mouth, and the placement of her eyes do not resemble the features of the sitter in Reynolda’s painting. Her blond, curly hair ensures that she is not Chase’s future wife, Alice Gerson (they married in 1886) or sister-in-law, Virginia Gerson, both of whom had very dark hair. Most recently, Ronald Pisano has said that the model could be either of his Gerson sisters-in-law, Minnie or Virginia. [6] Alice and Virginia were most often painted by Chase and other artists friendly with the Gerson family, but Minnie was part of the group and Chase was very fond of her as he was all of his wife’s family. Art historian Bruce Weber has noticed in photographs of Minnie that her facial structure and lighter coloring are more in keeping with the girl in Reynolda’s painting. [7] The possible family connection might explain why the sitter was once thought to be the artist’s daughter Dorothy. Since the sitter cannot be definitively identified, it suggests that Chase is not making a portrait but is capturing the spirit of a particular type of American woman. As the historian Annette Blaugrund puts it,
“His women in studio settings provide more than incidental interest of scale, they proclaim the new breed of women, serious art students and patrons. These women, educated by their exposure to diverse examples of art and by the books and studies they examine, represent the spiritual and uplifting nature of art. Endowed with creativity and intellectually (sic), they are not merely the decorative figures seen in many paintings of the period.” [8]
Pisano believes that this painting was first exhibited in Chase’s solo exhibition held at the Boston Art Club in 1886. He thinks it very likely that this painting received the top price of $500 in the Chase studio sale the following year, as reported in The Art Amateur. [9]
NOTES:
[1] Blaugrund, The Tenth Street Studio Building: Artist-Entrepreneurs from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists, p. 107
[2] The 1879 article by John Moran published in the Art Journal makes reference to the head of a polar bear as a decoration in Chase’s studio. In the painting The Tenth Street Studio, ca. 1884-1915 of Chase’s inner studio there is a polar bear pelt rug shown on the floor.
[3] “To the left of the door stands a high cabinet, surmounted by a bronze bust of Voltaire and having Old Venetian lamps pendant on either side. One panel is covered with brocade, while over the other droops a scarlet Spanish donkey blanket. . .some delicate little ivory miniatures, various articles of pottery, Italian, Egyptian, and Japanese. . . and a multitude of miscellaneous bric-a-brac.” Excerpt from John Moran, “Studio Life in New York, Art Journal 5 [1879]: 345.
[4] As detailed in the examination report done by the North Carolina Museum of Art Conservation Laboratory in August 1987.
[5] Blaugrund, Annette. The Tenth Street Studio Building , p. 119
[6] Pisano, Ronald. William Merritt Chase: Still Lifes, Interiors, Figures, Copies of Old Masters and Drawings, p. 93.
[7] Bruce Weber, Chase Inside and Out: The Aesthetic interiors of William Merritt Chase, p. 31
[8] Blaugrund, p. 120
[9] Pisano, William M. Chase, vol. 4, p. 93-4.
ProvenanceFrom 1962 to 1967
Mrs. Sydney Sonner, Pacific Palisades, CA. [1]
1967
James Graham & Sons (founded 1857), New York NY, purchased from Mrs. Sydney Sonner in 1967. [2]
From 1967
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem NC, purchased from James Graham & Sons, Inc. on July 7, 1967. [3]
Notes:
[1] Provenance research by Joan Durana, 1983, copy in object file.
[2] Bill of Sale, object file.
[3] See note 2.
Exhibition History1971
Reynolda House American Paintings
Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York NY.
For the benefit of the Smith College Scholarship Fund. (1/13/1971-1/31/1971)
Cat. No.23
1976
William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)
M. Knoedler & Co., New York NY.
For the benefit of the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY. (5/5/1976-6/5/1976)
Cat. No.59
1990-1992
American Originals, Selections From Reynolda House Museum Of American Art
The American Federation of Arts
Center for the Fine Arts, Miami FL (9/22/1990-11/18/1990)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs CA (12/16/1990-2/10/1991)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (3/6/1991-5/11/1991)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis TN (6/2/1991-7/28/1991)
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth TX (8/17/1991-10/20/1991)
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago IL (11/17/1991-1/12/1992)
The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK (3/1/1992-4/26/1992)
1997
The Tenth Street Studio Building: Artist-Entrepreneurs from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists
The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton NY (6/8/1997-8/10/1997)
2005
Vanguard Collecting: American Art at Reynolda House
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem NC (4/1/2005-8/21/2005)
2006-2007
Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film 1880-1910
Organized by Williams College Museum of Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem NC (3/24/2006-7/16/2006)
Grey Art Gallery of New York University, New York NY (9/1/2006–12/9/2006)
Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. (2/17/2007–5/20/2007)
Cat. No. 50.B
2017
Samuel F.B. Morse's Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (02/17/2017 - 06/04/2017)
2020
Girlhood in American Art
Reynolda Hosue Museum of American Art (10/20/20-3/21/21)
Published ReferencesWilliam Merritt Chase Portraits Akron: Akron Art Museum, 1982: illus. 12.
Millhouse, Barbara B. and Robert Workman. American Originals New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990: 86-9.
Blaugrund, Annette. Paintings And Patronage: The Tenth Street Studios Parrish Art Museum, 1996.
Schiller, Joyce K. Woman's World, 1880-1920: From Object To Subject Winston-Salem, NC: Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, 2000: 10.
Eldredge, Charles C. "The Paintings at Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston Salem, North Carolina," Antiques v. 142 (November 1992): 693-694 (illustration).
"Reynolds House Exhibition at Hirschl & Adler," Arts Magazine v.45 (February 1971): 54 (illustration).
Lassiter, Barbara B. Reynolda House American Paintings. Winston-Salem, NC: Reynolda House, Inc., 1971: 48, illus. 49.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 68, 69-70, 112, 113
Weber, Bruce. Chase Inside and Out : the Aesthetic Interiors of William Merritt Chase: November 16, 2004-January 29, 2005. New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., c2004.
Mathews, Nancy Mowll. Moving Pictures: The Un-Easy Relationship Between American Art & Early Film. Manchester VT: Hudson Hills Press, c2005.
Apgar, Garry, Shaun O’L Higgins, and Colleen Striegel The Newspaper in Art. New Media Ventures, Inc., 2004.
Pisano, Ronald, and completed by D. Frederick Baker and Carolyn K. Lane. William Merritt Chase: Still Lifes, Interiors, Figures and Drawings. (Vol. 4 of Chase Catalog Raisonné) New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010:I.21.
DepartmentAmerican Art
In the Studio
Artist
William Merritt Chase
(1849 - 1916)
Datecirca 1884
Mediumoil on canvas
DimensionsFrame: 50 x 33 3/8 in. (127 x 84.8 cm)
Canvas: 39 1/4 x 22 3/4 in. (99.7 x 57.8 cm)
SignedWm M. Chase
Credit LineOriginal Purchase Fund from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, ARCA, and Anne Cannon Forsyth
CopyrightPublic Domain
Object number1967.2.4
DescriptionWilliam Merritt Chase’s In the Studio is one of a number of paintings depicting the artist’s studio in the famous Tenth Street Studio Building in New York City. This building (1857-1956), designed by the distinguished architect William Morris Hunt and located at 51 West Tenth Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, was one of the first buildings in this country to feature appropriate studio and display spaces for visual artists. Although Chase was one among many distinguished American artists associated with the Tenth Street Studio Building, as art historian Annette Blaugrund puts it, “Chase used his studio as the ultimate marketing tool. Stories about him and his exotic studio in magazines and newspapers helped to forge his reputation and made him, as well as others who were similarly featured, important figures in American art.” [1]This painting represents the cosmopolitan aesthetic of Chase’s art and lifestyle. It celebrates the Indiana native’s financial and critical success upon his return to the United States in 1878 from six years of study and travel in Europe. Chase first rented a first-floor studio in the Tenth Street Building; within a year, he was able to acquire a much larger space, formerly that of the Hudson River School artist Albert Bierstadt. Here Chase was able to realize his dream of a large, richly decorated studio such as European artists had, where he could work, teach, entertain clients, and transact business. His Saturday receptions soon became celebrated events. The studio itself became the subject of numerous paintings and photographs not only by Chase, but by his fellow artists and students.
This painting depicts a section of the west wall of Chase’s “inner” studio, which, in the days when the Hudson River School artists dominated the Tenth Street Studio Building, had been a group exhibition space. Later, the artist Albert Bierstadt used it to display his massive canvasses. The inner studio was indeed much larger than the main studio, Chase’s workspace. In this depiction, a young woman is seated, holding a Japanese woodblock print and surrounded by Chase’s collection of “bric-a-brac,” a varied assortment of objects from around the world. Chase was an inveterate collector, indifferent to cost in the pursuit of acquisition, and he bought many of his things on his frequent travels to Europe that he then sent back to New York. As evidence of his active and varied collection practices, when Chase had to sell the contents of his studio at an auction in 1896, the items were sorted into twenty-five categories.
The sitter in Reynolda’s painting is an attractive young woman with fair hair arranged into bangs and loose ringlets framing her face, with a headband of white ribbon. She is dressed in a white satin directoire-style gown, probably a studio prop of Chase’s as there are other paintings of different sitters wearing a similar dress. She is seated in a swivel chair, having casually tossed her pink bonnet onto the plush pile rug under her feet. [2] She wears soft black suede mitts and a simple gold band on the pinkie finger of her left hand. She crosses her legs, slightly lifting the skirt of her dress and revealing slender ankles and dainty feet. Her lively and alert manner is suggested by her expression; she looks at the viewer directly, as if having only just been interrupted in her perusal of a Japanese print. The interruption does not seem unwelcome, as her gaze makes the viewer implicitly welcome into the fascinating ambience of the studio.
Many items from Reynolda’s painting can be spotted in other paintings Chase completed in his studio, such as Interior of the Artist’s Studio, 1880, and Tenth Street Studio, after 1895. These items include the ornately carved Italian Renaissance chest, the rondo bas relief, the hanging incense burner, the bronze Japanese figurine, and the Italianate bust. [3] The particular compositional cropping and arrangement of objects mirror exactly the room arrangement in a photograph William Merritt Chase in his Tenth Street studio, mimicking the pose of his wife as seen in the pastel Meditation hanging on wall behind him. The photo is given a circa date of 1895, more than a decade after the date of Reynolda House’s painting, making the identical placement of objects more problematic, but the similarity is striking.
The painting is on a canvas that was commercially prepared with a ground layer of thick white from P.J. Ulrich’s Artist Materials, 12th & 4th Avenues, New York. Chase mixed linseed or another type of drying oil with his oil paints, or thinned his paint with turpentine, allowing for wash-like effects of paint application on the surface. [4] Stylistically, Chase was lightening his palette from the darker tonality of his Munich training and Old Masters, but the lighting is still generalized and, although painterly, his brushwork and palette are not yet as impressionistic as he would become in later years.
The identity of the sitter remains unknown. When the painting was acquired for Reynolda House’s inaugural art collection in 1967, it bore the title Dorothy Chase in the Studio, c. 1905. However both style and subject of the painting place it in the period from 1880 to 1885. In addition, Chase’s daughter Dorothy, dark haired like her mother Alice Gerson Chase, was not born until 1891, so the sitter could not be her or any other of Chase’s daughters. Chase experts and art historians Ronald Pisano and Annette Blaugrund suggested that she might be the “well-known contemporary beauty Harriet Hubbard Ayer,” a former student of Chase whose portrait he had painted earlier in 1879 and 1880. [5] Yet in photographic likeness and Chase’s other paintings of Ayer, the shape of her face and mouth, and the placement of her eyes do not resemble the features of the sitter in Reynolda’s painting. Her blond, curly hair ensures that she is not Chase’s future wife, Alice Gerson (they married in 1886) or sister-in-law, Virginia Gerson, both of whom had very dark hair. Most recently, Ronald Pisano has said that the model could be either of his Gerson sisters-in-law, Minnie or Virginia. [6] Alice and Virginia were most often painted by Chase and other artists friendly with the Gerson family, but Minnie was part of the group and Chase was very fond of her as he was all of his wife’s family. Art historian Bruce Weber has noticed in photographs of Minnie that her facial structure and lighter coloring are more in keeping with the girl in Reynolda’s painting. [7] The possible family connection might explain why the sitter was once thought to be the artist’s daughter Dorothy. Since the sitter cannot be definitively identified, it suggests that Chase is not making a portrait but is capturing the spirit of a particular type of American woman. As the historian Annette Blaugrund puts it,
“His women in studio settings provide more than incidental interest of scale, they proclaim the new breed of women, serious art students and patrons. These women, educated by their exposure to diverse examples of art and by the books and studies they examine, represent the spiritual and uplifting nature of art. Endowed with creativity and intellectually (sic), they are not merely the decorative figures seen in many paintings of the period.” [8]
Pisano believes that this painting was first exhibited in Chase’s solo exhibition held at the Boston Art Club in 1886. He thinks it very likely that this painting received the top price of $500 in the Chase studio sale the following year, as reported in The Art Amateur. [9]
NOTES:
[1] Blaugrund, The Tenth Street Studio Building: Artist-Entrepreneurs from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists, p. 107
[2] The 1879 article by John Moran published in the Art Journal makes reference to the head of a polar bear as a decoration in Chase’s studio. In the painting The Tenth Street Studio, ca. 1884-1915 of Chase’s inner studio there is a polar bear pelt rug shown on the floor.
[3] “To the left of the door stands a high cabinet, surmounted by a bronze bust of Voltaire and having Old Venetian lamps pendant on either side. One panel is covered with brocade, while over the other droops a scarlet Spanish donkey blanket. . .some delicate little ivory miniatures, various articles of pottery, Italian, Egyptian, and Japanese. . . and a multitude of miscellaneous bric-a-brac.” Excerpt from John Moran, “Studio Life in New York, Art Journal 5 [1879]: 345.
[4] As detailed in the examination report done by the North Carolina Museum of Art Conservation Laboratory in August 1987.
[5] Blaugrund, Annette. The Tenth Street Studio Building , p. 119
[6] Pisano, Ronald. William Merritt Chase: Still Lifes, Interiors, Figures, Copies of Old Masters and Drawings, p. 93.
[7] Bruce Weber, Chase Inside and Out: The Aesthetic interiors of William Merritt Chase, p. 31
[8] Blaugrund, p. 120
[9] Pisano, William M. Chase, vol. 4, p. 93-4.
ProvenanceFrom 1962 to 1967
Mrs. Sydney Sonner, Pacific Palisades, CA. [1]
1967
James Graham & Sons (founded 1857), New York NY, purchased from Mrs. Sydney Sonner in 1967. [2]
From 1967
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem NC, purchased from James Graham & Sons, Inc. on July 7, 1967. [3]
Notes:
[1] Provenance research by Joan Durana, 1983, copy in object file.
[2] Bill of Sale, object file.
[3] See note 2.
Exhibition History1971
Reynolda House American Paintings
Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York NY.
For the benefit of the Smith College Scholarship Fund. (1/13/1971-1/31/1971)
Cat. No.23
1976
William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)
M. Knoedler & Co., New York NY.
For the benefit of the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY. (5/5/1976-6/5/1976)
Cat. No.59
1990-1992
American Originals, Selections From Reynolda House Museum Of American Art
The American Federation of Arts
Center for the Fine Arts, Miami FL (9/22/1990-11/18/1990)
Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs CA (12/16/1990-2/10/1991)
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (3/6/1991-5/11/1991)
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis TN (6/2/1991-7/28/1991)
Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth TX (8/17/1991-10/20/1991)
Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago IL (11/17/1991-1/12/1992)
The Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK (3/1/1992-4/26/1992)
1997
The Tenth Street Studio Building: Artist-Entrepreneurs from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists
The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton NY (6/8/1997-8/10/1997)
2005
Vanguard Collecting: American Art at Reynolda House
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem NC (4/1/2005-8/21/2005)
2006-2007
Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film 1880-1910
Organized by Williams College Museum of Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem NC (3/24/2006-7/16/2006)
Grey Art Gallery of New York University, New York NY (9/1/2006–12/9/2006)
Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. (2/17/2007–5/20/2007)
Cat. No. 50.B
2017
Samuel F.B. Morse's Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (02/17/2017 - 06/04/2017)
2020
Girlhood in American Art
Reynolda Hosue Museum of American Art (10/20/20-3/21/21)
Published ReferencesWilliam Merritt Chase Portraits Akron: Akron Art Museum, 1982: illus. 12.
Millhouse, Barbara B. and Robert Workman. American Originals New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1990: 86-9.
Blaugrund, Annette. Paintings And Patronage: The Tenth Street Studios Parrish Art Museum, 1996.
Schiller, Joyce K. Woman's World, 1880-1920: From Object To Subject Winston-Salem, NC: Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, 2000: 10.
Eldredge, Charles C. "The Paintings at Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston Salem, North Carolina," Antiques v. 142 (November 1992): 693-694 (illustration).
"Reynolds House Exhibition at Hirschl & Adler," Arts Magazine v.45 (February 1971): 54 (illustration).
Lassiter, Barbara B. Reynolda House American Paintings. Winston-Salem, NC: Reynolda House, Inc., 1971: 48, illus. 49.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Reynolda: Her Muses, Her Stories , with contributions by Martha R. Severens and David Park Curry (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Reynolda House Museum of American Art affiliated with Wake Forest University, 2017). pg. 68, 69-70, 112, 113
Weber, Bruce. Chase Inside and Out : the Aesthetic Interiors of William Merritt Chase: November 16, 2004-January 29, 2005. New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., c2004.
Mathews, Nancy Mowll. Moving Pictures: The Un-Easy Relationship Between American Art & Early Film. Manchester VT: Hudson Hills Press, c2005.
Apgar, Garry, Shaun O’L Higgins, and Colleen Striegel The Newspaper in Art. New Media Ventures, Inc., 2004.
Pisano, Ronald, and completed by D. Frederick Baker and Carolyn K. Lane. William Merritt Chase: Still Lifes, Interiors, Figures and Drawings. (Vol. 4 of Chase Catalog Raisonné) New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010:I.21.
Status
On view