William Merritt Chase

William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) was born 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 employed his son as a salesman in the family business. Chase showed an early interest in art, and studied under local, self-taught artists Barton S. Hays and Jacob Cox.

At the age of 19, he decided to become a sailor and travelled with his friend to Annapolis where he was commissioned to a merchant ship. After a brief three-month stint in the Navy, Chase understood that it was not for him and his teachers urged him to travel to New York to further his artistic training. He arrived in New York in 1869, met and studied with Joseph Oriel Eaton for a short time, 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 was then based. While he worked to help support his family he became active in the St. Louis art community, winning prizes for his paintings at a local exhibition. He also exhibited his first painting at the National Academy in 1871. Chase's talent elicited the interest of wealthy St. Louis collectors who arranged for him to visit Europe for two years, in exchange for paintings and Chase's help in securing European art for their collections.

In Europe, Chase settled at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, a long-standing centre of art training that was attracting increasing numbers of Americans and attracted Chase because it had fewer distractions than Paris. 

Chase travelled to Venice, Italy in 1877 with Duveneck and John Henry Twachtman before returning to the United States in the summer of 1878, a highly skilled artist representing the new wave of European-educated American talent. Home in America, he exhibited his painting Ready for the Ride (collection of the Union League Club) with the newly formed Society of American Artists in 1878. He also opened a studio in New York in the Tenth Street Studio Building, home to many of the important painters of the day. He was a member of the Tilers, a group of artists and authors, among whom were some of his notable friends: Winslow Homer, Arthur Quartley and Augustus Saint Gaudens.

Chase maintained a multifaceted public and private identity, including his roles as an artist, family man, and educator. Chase married Alice Gerson in 1887 and together they raised eight children during Chase's most energetic artistic period. His eldest daughters, Alice Dieudonnee Chase and Dorothy Bremond Chase, often modelled for their father.

In New York City, however, Chase became known for his flamboyance, especially in his dress, his manners, and most of all in his studio. At Tenth Street, Chase had moved into Albert Bierstadt's old studio and had decorated it as an extension of his own art. Chase filled the studio with lavish furniture, decorative objects, stuffed birds, oriental carpets, and exotic musical instruments. Chase's studio attracted numerous artists and cultural figures in New York City during the late 19th century. By 1895, the cost of maintaining the studio, in addition to his other residences, forced Chase to close it and auction the contents.

At the instigation of Mrs. William Hoyt, Chase opened the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art on eastern Long Island, New York in 1891. He taught there until 1902. Chase adopted the plein air method of painting, and often taught his students in outdoor classes. He also opened the Chase School of Art in 1896, which became the New York School of Art two years later with Chase staying on as instructor until 1907. Chase taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1896 to 1909; the Art Students League from 1878 to 1896 and again from 1907 to 1911; and the Brooklyn Art Association in 1887 and from 1891 to 1896. Along with Robert Henri, who became a rival instructor, Chase was a prominent teacher whose influence on American artists at the turn of the 20th century was widely recognised.

In addition to his instruction of East Coast artists like George Bellows, Louise Upton Brumback, Howard Chandler Christy, Kate Freeman Clark, Jay Hall Connaway, Mariette Leslie Cotton, Charles Demuth, Silas Dustin, Lydia Field Emmet, George Pearse Ennis, Marsden Hartley, Annie Traquair Lang, John Marin, M. Jean McLane, Frances Miller Mumaugh, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leopold Seyffert, Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones, Joseph Stella, Lillian Elvira Moore Abbot, and Edward Charles Volkert, he had an important role in influencing California art at the turn of the century, especially in interactions with Arthur Frank Mathews, Xavier Martinez, Percy Gray and Shirley Williamson. He also had an important role in influencing Texas Impressionism and taught painters Julian Onderdonk and Alice Schille. 

After stopping his work at Shinnecock Hills, Chase began taking groups of students overseas in the summer months to tour the important European art centres. In 1903, Chase and his students visited Haarlem in the Netherlands, where Chase was inspired by a schutterstuk by Frans Hals. He made a self-portrait of himself in the role of one of Hals' schutters, choosing his look-alike Johan Claesz Loo featured in The Officers of the St Adrian Militia Company in 1633.

In addition to painting portraits and full-length figurative works, Chase began painting landscapes in earnest in the late 1880s. His interest in landscape art may have been spawned by the landmark New York exhibit of French Impressionist works from Parisian dealer Durand-Ruel in 1886. Chase gained recognition for two prominent series of landscape subjects, both painted in an Impressionist manner. The first was his scenes of Prospect and Central Parks in New York; the second were his summer landscapes at Shinnecock. Chase usually featured people prominently in his landscapes. Often he depicted women and children in leisurely poses, relaxing on a park bench, on the beach, or lying in the summer grass at Shinnecock. Art historians have described the Shinnecock works as significant examples of American Impressionism.

In 1903, Chase rented the Villa La Meridiana near Careggi, Florence, to which he would return to paint each summer. Later he bought the Villa Silli, south of the city.

Chase won many honours at home and abroad, was a member of the National Academy of Design, 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 John Henry Twachtman died.

Chase's creativity declined in his later years, especially as modern art took hold in America, but he continued to paint and teach into the 1910s. During this period Chase taught such up and coming young artists as Wilhelmina Weber Furlong, Arthur Hill Gilbert, and Edward Hopper.

At Carmel-by-the-Sea from July through September 1914 Chase taught his last summer class, his largest with over one hundred pupils and his most problematic, at the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club's Summer School Of Art. His former student, Jennie V. Cannon, in conjunction with Chase's business manager C.P. Townsley and Carmel's co-founder James Franklin Devendorf, persuaded the esteemed painter to visit the Pacific Coast with promises of generous financial returns.

Suffering from declining health (cirrhosis of the liver), Chase took the opportunity shortly after his arrival to meet with the directors of San Francisco's forthcoming Panama–Pacific International Exposition to secure his own exhibition gallery, which he had been denied earlier. Several of Chase’s students at Carmel expressed admiration for his teaching, documenting his lectures and techniques. Chase found the art colony at Carmel too confining socially and moved his residence to the nearby luxury Hotel Del Monte in Monterey, where he negotiated several important portrait commissions. In mid-August one of his students, Helena Wood Smith, was brutally murdered by her Japanese lover, which caused the cancellation of several classes, near violent hysteria in the art colony, and the early departure of some of his students. Chase continued with 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 25 October 1916, at his home in New York City, an esteemed elder of the American art world. He was interred in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.