November 1, 1849 – October 25, 1916
William Merritt Chase was an American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism. He is credited with founding the Chase School, which would later become the Parsons School of Design.
William Merritt Chase was born on November 1, 1849, in Williamsburg (now Nineveh), Indiana, to the family of Sarah Swain and David H. Chase, a local businessman. Chase’s father moved the family to Indianapolis in 1861 and hired his son as a salesman in the family business. Chase showed an early interest in art and studied with local self-taught artists Barton S. Hays and Jacob Cox.
At the age of 19 he decided to become a sailor and went with a friend to Annapolis, where he was commissioned to board a merchant ship. After a brief three-month stint in the Navy he realized it was not for him and decided to go to New York to further his art education, where he arrived in 1869, met and studied briefly with Joseph Oriel Eaton, then enrolled in the National Academy of Design under Lemuel Wilmarth, a student of the famous French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme.
In 1870, declining family fortunes forced Chase to leave New York for St. Louis, Missouri, where his family resided. While working to help support his family, he became active in the St. Louis art community, winning awards for his paintings in a local exhibition. In 1871 he exhibited his first painting at the National Academy. Chase’s talent piqued the interest of wealthy St. Louis collectors who arranged for him to travel to Europe for two years in exchange for paintings and Chase’s help in procuring European art for their collections.
In Europe, Chase settled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, a long-standing center of art education that attracted increasing numbers of Americans and attracted Chase because it offered fewer distractions than Paris. He studied under Alexander von Wagner and Karl von Piloty and befriended American artists Walter Shirlaw, Frank Duveneck and J. Frank Currier.
In Munich, Chase employed his rapidly growing talent most often in figurative works. In January 1876 one of these figurative works, was exhibited at the Boston Art Club; later that year it was exhibited and won a medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, and this success earned Chase fame.
In 1877 Chase traveled to Venice, Italy. Back in America, he exhibited his painting Ready for the Ride (Union League Club collection) with the newly formed Society of American Artists in 1878. He also opened a studio in New York City in the Tenth Street Studio Building. He was a member of the Tilers.
In 1881, friend and artist William Preston Phelps returned to Europe and joined Chase on a working tour of Italy, Venice, Capri, and then Germany.
Chase cultivated multiple personalities: sophisticated cosmopolitan, devoted family man and esteemed teacher. Chase married Alice Gerson in 1887 and together they raised eight children during Chase’s most energetic artistic period. The eldest daughters, Alice Dieudonnee Chase and Dorothy Bremond Chase, often served as models for their father.
In New York, however, Chase became known for his ostentatiousness, especially in his dress, manners, and especially in his studio. At Tenth Street, Chase had moved into Albert Bierstadt’s old studio and furnished it as an extension of his own art. Chase filled the studio with sumptuous furniture, decorative objects, stuffed birds, oriental rugs, and exotic musical instruments. The studio was a focal point for sophisticated and fashionable members of the late 19th-century New York art world. In 1895 the cost of maintaining the studio, as well as his other residences, forced Chase to close it and auction off its contents.
In addition to painting, Chase actively developed an interest in teaching. He initially took on private students, the first of whom was Dora Wheeler, a student from 1879 to 1881, who became a professional artist and lifelong friend. Later, somewhat reluctantly, he was persuaded to run an art school in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island…”
At the instigation of Mrs. William Hoyt, Chase opened the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art in 1891 in eastern Long Island, New York. He taught there until 1902. In 1896 he also opened the Chase School of Art, which two years later became the New York School of Art, where Chase remained as an instructor until 1907. He taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1896 to 1909; at the Art Students League from 1878 to 1896 and again from 1907 to 1911; and at the Brooklyn Art Association in 1887 and from 1891 to 1896. Along with Robert Henri, who became a rival instructor, Chase was the most important teacher of American artists at the turn of the 20th century. He played an important role in influencing turn-of-the-century California art. He also played an important role in influencing Texas Impressionism.
After stopping his work at Shinnecock Hills, Chase began taking groups of students abroad in the summer months to visit important European art centers. In 1903 they visited Haarlem, in the Netherlands, where Chase was inspired by a schutterstuk by Frans Hals. He cast himself in the role of one of Hals’ schutterstuks, choosing his double Johan Claesz Loo, who appeared in The Officers of St. Adrian’s Militia Company in 1633.
Chase won numerous awards at home and abroad, was a member of the National Academy of Design in New York, and from 1885 to 1895 was president of the Society of American Artists. He became a member of the Ten American Painters after the death of John Henry Twachtman.
Chase’s creativity declined in his later years, especially with the rise of modern art in America, but he continued to paint and teach until the 1910s. During that time Chase taught young emerging artists such as Wilhelmina Weber Furlong, Arthur Hill Gilbert, and Edward Hopper.
In Carmel-by-the-Sea, from July to September 1914, Chase taught his last summer class, the largest with over a hundred students and the most problematic, at the Summer School Of Art of the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club. His former student, Jennie V. Cannon, in collaboration with Chase’s business manager, C. P. Townsley, and Carmel co-founder James Franklin Devendorf, persuaded the esteemed painter to travel to the Pacific coast with the promise of a generous financial return. Suffering from poor health (cirrhosis of the liver), Chase seized the opportunity shortly after his arrival to meet with the directors of the upcoming Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco to secure his own exhibition gallery, which he had previously been denied. Chase found Carmel’s art colony too socially restricted and moved his residence to the nearby, luxurious Hotel Del Monte in Monterey, where he negotiated several major portrait commissions. In mid-August one of his students, Helena Wood Smith, was brutally murdered by her Japanese lover, resulting in the cancellation of several classes, near-violent hysteria in the art colony and the early departure of some of his students. Chase continued his regular teaching schedule, held meetings with important regional artists, such as William Ritschel, painted several local scenes and experimented with monotypes.
Chase died on October 25, 1916, at his home in New York, an esteemed elder in the American art world. He was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
Today his works can be found in most major museums in the United States. His home and studio in Shinnecock Hills, New York, were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 as the William Merritt Chase Homestead.
