William Merritt Chase
Famous for once exclaiming, “My God, I’d rather go to Europe than to Heaven!” the artist William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) was one of the most influential and respected American artists in his lifetime. Although his fame has lessened in comparison to his friends and peers James Abbot McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent, through his students Joseph Stella, Guy Pene du Bois, Rockwell Kent, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O’Keeffe, Chase would influence subsequent developments in American art lasting through most of the twentieth century. Although Chase neither understood nor welcomed the development of Modernism in his later years, his students learned from his example of a professional life deeply immersed in art and culture. Chase’s dapper wardrobe—a signature silk top hat with flat brim, be-ribboned spectacles, elegant walking stick, and flowing cloak—reflected his enthusiasm for European style. He was often accompanied by a fez-wearing man-servant or elegant Russian wolfhounds whenever he went out in public. He appeared much in the popular press of the time, and authors such as Stephen Crane and William Dean Howells based characters on him.
Chase was born in Williamsburg, now Nineveh, Indiana, the eldest child of seven born to David and Sarah Chase. At the age of twelve, he moved with his family to Indianapolis. As a teenager, his constant sketching and drawing coupled with a lack of interest in the family business—his father’s shoe shop—led his reluctant father to place him with Indiana artist Barton Hays for formal artistic instruction. In an effort to leave Indianapolis and the shoe store, the seventeen-year-old joined the Navy, but left after just three months, returning to Indianapolis and then moving to St. Louis. Another artistic mentor, Jacob Cox, encouraged Chase to move to New York, giving him a letter of introduction to the artist Joseph O. Eaton, then teaching at the National Academy of Design. Chase studied abroad in Munich, Germany, at the Royal Academy from 1872 to 1878 with teachers including Karl von Piloty and Wilhelm Leibl and struck up friendships with the expatriate American painters Frank Duveneck and John Twatchman. At the end of his European study, Chase turned down a professorship at the Royal Academy to return to New York and teach at the Art Students League, where he was an instructor until 1894. He taught at the Brooklyn Art School from 1890 to 1895, the Shinnecock Art School on Long Island from 1892 to 1902, the Chase School from 1896 to 1908 and the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts from 1898 to 1911.
Upon his return in 1878 to New York City, Chase secured the lease of a first-floor studio space in the Tenth Street Studio Building; within a year, he had a larger space. Chase decorated his studio with original art, artistic copies of the Old Masters, and “bric-a-brac” of all sorts, gathered by the artist on trips to Europe. His studio became one of the most elite social spaces in New York. He embodied the bohemian spirit in the Aesthetic tradition and was widely known in European and American artistic and social circles.
While a student in Munich, Chase traveled through Europe, studying paintings in various collections by Frans Hals, Anthony van Dyck, and, later, Diego Velázquez and Eduoard Manet. He would become increasingly influenced by the Impressionist palette and technique, especially when he was living and teaching in Shinnecock, Long Island during the summers. Chase met James Abbott McNeill Whistler in London in 1885, and they agreed to paint portraits of each other. Chase’s portrait of Whistler is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while Whistler’s painting of Chase is apparently lost. Despite their temperamental differences, Chase was a great admirer of Whistler’s paintings, as he was of his peer John Singer Sargent.
In 1887 he married Alice Gerson, whose family he had been well acquainted with for a number of years. He was noticeably devoted to his family, as letters and photographs attest. He would paint his wife, his sisters-in-law, eight children, sons and daughters-in-law and grandchildren throughout his career.
Chase was not included in the famous and forward-looking Armory Show of 1913. His work represented a glorious endpoint of American Impressionism; it would be the work of his students to advance the development of American art.
