William Merritt Chase was born on November 1, 1849, in Williamsburg (currently Nineveh), Indiana, United States. He was the first of five children of David Hester Chase, a local shoe merchant, and Sarah Swain.
In 1861, the family relocated to Indianapolis, Indiana, United States.
William Merritt Chase received his first drawing lessons in 1867 in Williamsburg from the local painters like Barton Stone Hays and Jacob Cox.
Two years later, William was pushed by his teachers to travel to New York City. There, the young artist met and studied with Joseph Oriel Eaton for some time, then he enrolled at the National Academy of Design where he had studied under the tutelage of Lemuel Wilmarth.
Because of the financial problems of the Chase family, William Merritt Chase had to come back to Saint Louis, Missouri, the United States where the family lived by the time. Due to the interest of local art collectors in his art, young Chase had an opportunity to pursue his artistic training in Munich, Germany where he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in 1872.
The painter had studied at the institution for five years under Alexander von Wagner and Karl von Piloty. Among his notable classmates were American painters Walter Shirlaw, Frank Duveneck and John Henry Twachtman.
William Merritt Chase started his professional career in 1870 when he worked as a portraitist in Saint Louis, Missouri to support his family and earn his living. He presented his first artworks at the local exhibition in 1871. The show provided the young artist with first popularity which allowed him to travel to Munich.
While in Europe, Chase sent regularly his paintings to New York City where they were represented at the National Academy of Design.
In 1874, the artist opened his studio in New York City at Tenth Street. It contained many decorative objects and often was depicted by the artist. It was a place where Chase gave private lessons, gathered his colleagues, patrons and worked on his canvases in muddy brown tonalities firstly with the backgrounds full of abstract geometric collections of paintings, mirrors, and textiles.
The next exhibition at which the painter took part became the show at the Boston Art Club in 1876 where Chase presented one of his portraits titled Keying Up – The Court Jester. Later the same year, the painting was awarded a medal at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.
In two years, William occupied the post of art teacher at the Art Students League in New York City where he had taught for eighteen years. The same year, the painter exhibited with the Society of American Artists his Ready for the Ride which received good reviews from critics.
William Chase became a president of the Society of American Artists in 1885. The painter had presided it for ten years.
The same year the painter left his post at the Society, he had to close his New York studio because of the high cost of its maintaining. At this time, Chase started to produce his brilliant landscapes, the most well-known of which became the series Prospect Park, Central Park, and Shinnecock. The canvases were inspired in style by Impressionism.
The next period of the painter’s career was fully related to the teaching activity. He founded the American Society of Painters in Pastel and established his own art schools, the first of which became Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art on Long Island in 1891. It had functioned for eleven years. The next art institution Chase opened was Chase School of Art (currently Parsons School of Design) where he gave lessons from 1896 till 1907. Chase also taught at some other schools this time like the Brooklyn Art Association from (1887-1896) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1896-1909).
In 1907, William Merritt Chase returned to his first teaching post at the Art Students League where he had worked for three years.
At the end of his life, William Chase gave lessons at the summer classes in the United Kingdom, Spain, Holland and Italy. One of the last teaching positions he occupied was the post at Carmel, California in 1914.
William Merritt Chase was a prolific painter who had a great influence on art in general and on American art in particular. So, by founding the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art and Chase School of Art, the painter drew attention to American art and its representatives. Chase’s landscapes, still lifes and portraits in which he interpreted French impressionist technics allowed him to develop the new style called American Impressionism.
Despite his painting career, Chase was extremely talented and effective teacher who transmitted his knowledge to many artists who became masters of art, like Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, Frank Duveneck, Lawton S. Parker, John Henry Twachtman, Irving Ramsey Wiles, Charles Webster Hawthorne, Alice Kent Stoddard, Georgia O'Keeffe, George Bellows and others.
Nowadays, the painter’s heritage is preserved at various prestigious museums and galleries of the United States.
The home and studio of William Merritt Chase at Shinnecock Hills, New York City were included in National Register of Historic Places in 1983 as the William Merritt Chase Homestead.
Quotations:
"Life is very short... but I would like to live four times and if I could, I would set out to do no other things than I am seeking now to do."
"Diversity...is not casual liberal tolerance of anything not yourself. It is not polite accommodation. Instead, diversity is, in action, the sometimes painful awareness that other people, other races, other voices, other habits of mind have as much integrity of being, as much claim on the world as you do... And I urge you, amid all the differences present to the eye and mind, to reach out to create the bond that...will protect us all. We are all meant to be here together."
"Design is everything."
"You must try to match your colours as nearly as you can to those you see before you, and you must study the effects of light and shade on nature's own hues and tints."
"Do not try to paint the grandiose thing. Paint the commonplace so that it will be distinguished."
"Don't try to make comparisons between your own pictures. Forget what you have done and think only of making the best of what you are doing."
"I don't believe in making pencil sketches and then painting your landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky."
"Association with my pupils has kept me young in my work. Criticism of their work has kept my own point of view clear."
Physical Characteristics: William Merritt Chase was a person with elegant appearance and always stylish.
William Merritt Chase married one of his life models, Alice Gerson, in 1886. The couple had eight children who often were models for Chase’s paintings, like his daughters Alice Dieudonnee and Dorothy Bremond.
