world of Munich and was regarded as a coming man. He won competitions,
painted Piloty’s children, painted “The Turkish Page,” the Duveneck
portrait called “The Smoker,” “The Jester,” “The Dowager,” “The
Apprentice Boy,” “The Broken Jug,” and other works. A chance to review
some of these pictures was recently afforded at the Panama-Pacific
Exposition at San Francisco, where Chase was represented by a roomful
of pictures, and many people were astonished to find how very solidly
and beautifully painted were these early examples. They were, of
course, dark in illumination with some bitumen in the shadows. It
was studio light, not _plein air_ that Munich taught. It took Chase
a number of years to arrive at a higher key of light, but in other
matters of technique he had become something of a master before leaving
Munich--so much so that he was asked to remain as an instructor in the
Bavarian Academy. He declined, however, and in 1877 went to Venice,
where he joined Duveneck and Twachtman and remained for nearly a year.
Venice meant not a great deal to Chase. He painted it, but in the
formal Munich manner, and with little of the local light or color
of the place. While there he fell upon hard times, was in financial
straits, and became ill, possibly as the result of privations. But
he continued painting, and, what is more astonishing, while in dire
poverty he began collecting all sorts of artistic plunder. This
was the beginning of a taste that he indulged in all his life. He
bought pictures, rugs, brocades, silks, brass, guns, swords, jewels,
rings--anything that was beautiful or artistic in design or color. At
different times he had large collections of antiquities, and was ever
hunting for more. At Venice he added two monkeys to his possessions,
and when a few months later he returned to New York and took his Tenth
Street studio he had several strange parrots and odd dogs as adjuncts
to the place. The high walls of the big studio were hung with bits of
tapestries, old velvets, pictures; the floor was covered with Oriental
rugs; the tables were littered with clocks, pistols, old books, brass
bowls; and the screens were draped with silks and brocades. It was the
first “artistic” studio in New York.
This was in 1877 and Chase had returned to New York to become a
teacher in the newly established Art Students League. That was the
beginning of his long and very useful career as a teacher. The Art
Students League and the Society of American Artists were started about
the same time, the Metropolitan Museum having preceded them by a few
years. The movement for art was under way and Chase had arrived at the
psychological moment. Associated with Beckwith, Blum, Shirlaw, and
others he immediately took a positive interest in current art matters.
The big studio became the gathering-place of the young men, where
resolutions were passed and committees were set in motion. Society also
found its way there, for Chase gave Saturday receptions when the door
with the vibrating lyre on the back of it was swung open by a colored
servant in fez and gown, and pictures and antiquities were displayed
and talked about by the painter himself. At other times dinners
and dances were given there, to which came many notables. People
from the opera sang, Carmencita danced, and society people posed in
picture-frames for the characters of Titian and Van Dyck. Chase had a
decided vogue, social as well as artistic, almost from the very start.
As a painter he was taken seriously and received his meed of praise
with few dissenting voices. Almost every one in the press and magazines
hailed him as the much-needed person--the man who technically knew
how to paint. His pictures at no time ever sold very well, but that
was for the reason perhaps that they never possessed an intimate
human interest, not because they were indifferently painted. On the
whole, though some of the elders looked askance at his broad brushing,
or thought his themes somewhat material and superficial, he had no
grievance of a Whistler kind against either critic or public. The art
clubs elected him to membership, he spent his first summer after his
return in a trip through the Erie Canal with the Tile Club, in 1880 he
became a member of the Society of American Artists, and in 1883 its
president. The same year he had organized and sent to Munich the first
group of American pictures for exhibition there.
A curiosity as to how art had been produced by other people, in other
times and countries as well as our own, was always with Chase. He was a
great traveller, a great student of art, a great haunter of galleries
and museums. In the thirty or more years that I knew him I had met him
at different times in almost every gallery of Europe. Only a year or so
before the Great War I was working in the Uffizi one hot July afternoon
after every one had left the place. I had been alone for several hours
when I heard steps approaching me down the long corridor. It was late
and one of the attendants was probably coming to tell me it was time to
close. But no; instead of that I heard in very good English:
“At it again, I see! At it again!”
I turned around to find Chase standing there. He, too, had stayed on in
the heat after the crowd had gone, and had no doubt been prying into
some Titian or questioning some Rembrandt or Rubens!
For many years he kept voyaging to Europe summer after summer. I never
chanced to cross with him, but one spring, while bidding farewell
to some friends who were sailing, I saw Chase jump out of a cab and
scramble up the landing-stage--the last man to arrive--and still giving
some directions over his shoulder to his colored man, who remained on
the dock. On every steamer he sailed in he organized art, painted the
cabin or smoke-room panels, sketched the captain, and made a portrait
of the ship’s beauty. Arrived in Europe, he went to see not only
exhibitions and museums but brothers of the craft in their studios.
He spoke no French, Spanish, or Italian, and had only a limited
vocabulary in German, but that made no difference. He got on better
with Boldini and Alfred Stevens in Paris using the sign language than
with Whistler in London exchanging biting English. Everywhere he was
welcomed and treated as a man of distinction in his profession, and
everywhere he saw something new and was perhaps influenced thereby.
He was eager to learn and susceptible to impression--so much so that
he was said to have followed at different times Leibl, Stevens, Rico,
Fortuny, Whistler; but the things which Chase followed were minor
matters of handling or arrangement and did not affect his personal
point of view. They were superficial fancies and were soon merged,
fused, or abandoned. Some of the old masters, Velasquez, Titian,
Hals, Rembrandt, had a stronger influence upon him, but these men he
never tried to follow. It was their high artistic plane that gave him
inspiration. Standing before Titian’s “Young Englishman” in the Pitti,
his admiration for its superb poise and lofty dignity was unbounded. It
was faultless and flawless intellectually and technically. The left eye
was out of drawing, but Titian intended it so. It gave the face more
character. He never even wanted to suspect that the restorer in the
cleaning-room was perhaps responsible for the bad drawing of the eye.
Titian was above criticism.
Chase was never mean in his enthusiasms. He loved whole-heartedly.
Before Velasquez at Madrid everything was just as it should be. He
was the greatest of them all--the master craftsman of the craft; in
the Louvre he protested that no one had ever equalled or approached
such still-life painting as that of Chardin; at Haarlem he was just as
unstinted in praise of Frans Hals. And he was right about them all.
He was a very good judge of pictures and picked out no questionable
masters for admiration. Where he found a great masterpiece in a
gallery, there he unslung his kit, sat down, and made a copy. He at
different times produced very remarkable copies of Velasquez, Hals,
Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck, Ribera, Watteau. Whatever past art had to
teach, Chase was eager to learn. He kept a receptive mind and a live
interest in all phases of painting, and had more inherent knowledge
of craftsmanship than any of his contemporaries. The literary history
of art he knew nothing about, and probably could not have told within
a hundred years when Velasquez or Hals was born. That side of art has
small interest for artists, and for Chase it was more or less of a
blank space.
His summer trips to Europe began in 1881, when he went to Paris and
Madrid, making in the latter city a copy of the “Tapestry Weavers.”
The next year he was again in Spain with Blum and Vinton. At that
time Madrid was a great place for brass, pictures, stuffs, curios,
and Chase bought without stint. He needed materials for still-life
pictures and, besides, the big Tenth Street studio absorbed no end
of furnishings. The summer of 1883 found him in Holland, living at
Zandvoort with Blum, and painting Blum in a large garden-picture called
“The Tiff.” In 1885 he went to see Whistler in London. They started
out on terms of mutual admiration, painted each other’s portraits,
travelled in Holland together, but finally ended up by quarrelling.
The Whistler portrait of Chase has disappeared, or at least its
whereabouts, if it still exists, is unknown; but the Chase portrait
of Whistler is extant and now in the Metropolitan Museum. Whistler
declared it “a monstrous lampoon,” and he was about right in saying so.
It is Whistler the _poseur_, not the real man. Certain eccentricities
or personal peculiarities were so extravagantly presented that the
characterization became little less than caricature.
In 1886 Chase was married to Miss Gerson and for a few years the
European trips were abandoned. He was still teaching in the League,
was president of the Society of American Artists, and was holding
exhibitions of his work at the Boston Art Club and elsewhere. He
began doing some open-air pastels in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. A
small club called the “Painters in Pastel” had been organized in
New York with Blum as president, and Chase, Beckwith, La Farge,
Twachtman, Weir, Wiles as members. Chase became interested in the
gay color-possibilities of the medium and proceeded to apply it to
park scenes with children, flowers, water, and trees. Years before,
Alfred Stevens had told him that his Munich scheme of light was too
dark and Chase immediately began to lighten it. Perhaps the medium of
pastel finally drove out the last vestige of Munich, for certainly his
open-air pictures, without suggesting _pointillisme_ or impressionism
or optical mixture of any kind, took on very light and brilliant
colorings. They were charming expositions of color and sunlight, and
were regarded at the time as something of a departure.
His works in oil measurably responded to the newly discovered
brightness of his pastels, but they were always somewhat lower in
key. Something of Munich method clung to his portraits even into the
nineties. The “Lady in Black” (a portrait of Mrs. Leslie Cotton) in the
Metropolitan Museum is an illustration to the point. It is excellent if
somewhat sombre portraiture. Both Chase and Sargent painted Carmencita,
the dancer, in 1890, Sargent’s picture being now in the Luxembourg
and Chase’s in the Metropolitan Museum. The Chase shows very well his
illumination, his color scheme, his drawing, and his brush-work at that
time. Without radically changing them, he varied them from year to year
to an extent that might almost be called a new manner or style. He was
always changing, as became a painter who counted his education as never
complete while he lived.
He was widely known at this time through many pictures in annual
exhibitions and by separate exhibitions of his works, as, for instance,
that at Buffalo in 1891. The Academy of Design had overcome what
prejudices against him it may have had and elected him to membership,
he had started teaching in Brooklyn, and the same year his idea of a
summer art school at Shinnecock, Long Island, came to realization.
A house and studio, a class and a cottage colony were all started
and completed out there in the sand-dunes by the sea, and one of the
most picturesque art schools in America was soon under way. It was
then and there that Chase did perhaps his best teaching and painted
his best work not only in landscape, shore piece, and marine, but in
portraiture, genre, and still-life. The portrait of his mother, done at
Shinnecock, was almost certainly inspired by the fine early Rembrandt
of an aged woman in the National Gallery, and yet there is hardly a
line of resemblance that can be traced. The Chase portrait is very
sober, serious, almost severe in its white cap and black silk dress.
It has no flourish of brush nor flare of color, and, like the Whistler
portrait of his mother, seems to have more fine feeling about it than
any other portrait of his that comes to mind. This, one can imagine,
came about in both cases because the subjects were intimately known
to the painters, and their appearances had been under long reflection
before either painter put brush to canvas.
It was perhaps a shortcoming of Chase’s art that he insisted upon
merely seeing his subject and not thinking about it. The appearance to
him was everything, the reflection or thought about it nothing. Yet the
pictures of his that people like best are the ones where some thinking
was done. The mother portrait is the instance just given, and better
still than that perhaps is the “Woman with a White Shawl,” now in the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. The latter is beautifully drawn and
painted, rightly placed on the canvas, true in values, technically
as nearly right as anything Chase ever did, but, oddly enough, one
does not think of it technically nor regard it at first decoratively.
It is the fine humanity of it--the eternal womanly--that catches the
fancy. It is the portrait of a sensitive, refined American woman--in a
way the ideal of a type that every American has seen or at some time
has known about. Chase, with all his talk about dealing with surfaces
only, sometimes talked the other way and expanded on character. He
knew the paint-brush could go beneath the surface, for his own brush
occasionally brought up astonishing results. The “Woman with a White
Shawl” in its fine sympathy and inherent refinement of character may
be regarded as Chase’s high-water mark in portraiture. His portraits of
men like those of Louis Windmuller, Dean Grosvenor, Robert Underwood
Johnson, hardly reach up to it. They lack interest.
At the same time with the “Woman with a White Shawl” he did the
“Alice,” now in the Chicago Art Institute--a young girl with a ribbon
thrown back of her shoulders almost like a skipping-rope. But this
is just the ordinary Chase--that is, an excellent and well-drawn and
rightly painted girl of twelve moving across the room with a smiling,
somewhat unintelligent, face. The only thinking that Chase put in this
picture was in regard to the action or movement of the figure. The rest
was merely so much still-life painted for its surface texture as one
might paint a brass bucket or the scales of a fish. And yet the “Alice”
is an excellent picture and exhibits Chase’s theory of art quite
perfectly. But it also demonstrates the truth that the sum of art does
not lie on the surface, that the model alone is possibly not sufficient
in itself to make up the highest kind of pictorial beauty, and that the
intellectual and emotional nature of the painter is a potent factor
in all great art. Chase at heart knew that. Titian’s portraits had
convinced him of it years before.
[Illustration: “The Woman with the White Shawl,” by William Merritt
Chase.
In the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.]
Honors, prizes, and medals were coming to him, his teaching was very
successful, he had a large following, and was thought the most
considerable of our art leaders; but beneath the surface all was
not so placid or so pleasant. In 1895 he was no longer president
of the Society, he gave up his Brooklyn class, and also his Tenth
Street studio. Artistic extravagance or want of revenue or some other
financial disability had placed him in straitened circumstances. All
of his pictures and collections had to be sold to pay his debts. With
characteristic indifference he gave a farewell dinner in the big studio
before leaving it, gathered together what possessions remained to him
in a house in Stuyvesant Square, and shortly thereafter, with his
family and a number of pupils, went to Spain.
In June he returned to Shinnecock, and in the autumn took a studio at
Fifth Avenue and Thirtieth Street, and opened at Fifty-seventh Street
the Chase School. This school soon became the New York School of Art,
and Chase was at its head for eleven years. He also went on teaching
at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, going over to Philadelphia
every week for the purpose. Then for half a dozen years he taught and
painted at Shinnecock with little travel interspersed. It was during
these years that he did the “Grey Kimono” and the “Red Box,” portraits
arranged with Japanese accessories that showed brilliant coloring,
swift handling, and rather superficial characterization. There was none
of the Japanese spirit or even method about them. Then, too, he did
many shore pieces and views of the sea with the Shinnecock dunes in
the foreground. In these pictures he often placed in the first plane
small children in white, with a note of color in hats or ribbons, or
a reading woman with a bright parasol. The bright spots of color lent
brilliancy of effect and the white dresses gave a high pitch of light.
They were very attractive pictures, and some of the seas put in the
backgrounds had notes of power about them; but usually the product was
merely a handsome decorative pattern--just what the painter intended it
should be.
Occasionally, too, while at Shinnecock, Chase painted views of the
sea, unadorned or unalloyed by beach or shore or people, that were
very effective in wave movement and color. He had a finer feeling for
color and texture than Winslow Homer but he never had Homer’s grasp of
power. In his studio at Shinnecock he painted portraits, genre, and
still-life--some of the last being fish. Here, in still-life, with
his cunning handling and with color and texture as the chief motive,
he appeared to great advantage. By many people his fish-painting
is regarded as his highest achievement. In no less than half a
dozen museums in the United States he is represented by still-life
pictures in which the bulk, the weight, the limpness of dead fish are
convincingly shown, but where perhaps greater emphasis is thrown on the
slippery wet surfaces with their iridescent colorings. A few years
before he died, in showing a new fish-picture in his studio he remarked
to me with some deprecation in his manner that he supposed after he was
gone he would be known as a fish-painter! He had made the same protest
to others.
[Illustration: “Afternoon at Peconic,” by William Merritt Chase.]
A short trip to London was taken in 1902. His pupils had asked him
to sit to Sargent for his portrait and he did so. The portrait was
afterward given to the Metropolitan Museum, where it now hangs. Chase
greatly admired Sargent’s sureness and facility and often referred his
students to Sargent’s portraits for their study. He was always generous
in recognition of good work, even where perhaps he did not like the
worker’s point of view, as with Boldini, for example. Sargent and
Boldini could outfoot him on his own ground, but that did not matter.
He could still cheer for them.
It was during 1902 that Chase conceived the remarkable idea of not
only going to Europe himself for the summer months but taking with
him his entire class of students. The first contingent went with him
to Holland, and at Haarlem one night at dinner he gave me an account
of the venture and its success. His pupils had not only profited
by foreign scene and museum but he had taken them to see certain
well-known painters in their studios and shown them the modern methods
of painting. The next year he took the class to England, located it on
Hampstead Heath, and introduced it at the studios of Sargent, Abbey,
Lavery, Alma-Tadema, Shannon. The year of 1905 the class was in Madrid
and after that for a number of years in Florence. Chase bought a villa
in Florence, but apparently it was little more than a storehouse for
objects of art which he was still collecting. He spent much time at
Venice, and both there and at Florence would take his pupils to the
great galleries and point out to them what was excellent in the old
masters. It was a new method of art teaching and satisfactory results
came from it.
Chase’s winters had been spent in New York and he kept moving in both
his habitations and his occupations. He left the Fifth Avenue studio
for a large rambling place on Fourth Avenue, where rooms opened into
rooms, and where he continued painting people and fish. He again
took up teaching at the Art Students League, sent pictures to the
International Exhibition at Berlin, held an exhibition of his own
at Cincinnati, went to California where he had a summer school at
Carmel-by-the-Sea, served as a member of the Panama-Pacific Exposition
jury. His energy and his interest were unflagging. He painted and
taught and talked, he came and went and came again, as no other painter
in American art-history. His industry alone would command respect. Even
when he fell into his final illness and was taken to Atlantic City for
change of air he had canvases and brushes packed and sent with him. He
might be able to paint down there. At the last, when too weak to read,
it pleased him to go over, with his wife, all the beautiful pictures
they had seen together and compare their likings. His enthusiasm was
always something to be remembered; and when in October, 1916, he
died, there was a pronounced feeling in art circles that not only a
torch-bearer, but a devoted lover of art had gone on.
There was nothing complicated or hidden or mysterious about either
Chase or his art. He frankly stated his aim, faith, and practice
more than once and adhered to his beliefs for more than forty years.
He cared nothing about theories or philosophies or ideals and was
not led off by realism, impressionism, or cubism. He talked much on
art, not only to his classes but to miscellaneous audiences; but he
indulged in no metaphysical flights and spoke a language that all could
understand. As a practical painter his primary concern was with the
ability to paint. The picture should be technically and mechanically
a good piece of workmanship. The grammar of art first, and what you
may have to say with it afterward. At times he intimated that things,
by no means technical, could be said with the paint-brush, as, for
example, this utterance: “The value of a work of art depends simply
and solely on the height of inspiration, on the greatness of soul,
of the man who produced it.” But, generally speaking, Chase cared
not too much for “soul” in art and produced little of it in his own
pictures. His creed of painting was better stated in another sentence.
“The essential phases of a great picture are three in number, namely:
truth, interesting treatment, and quality.” By truth he meant that the
picture should give the impression of a thing well seen. By interesting
treatment he meant verve, spirit, enthusiasm, the interest of the
artist--an interest which should express itself in his manner of
treatment. Regarding this he continued:
“To my mind, one of the simplest explanations of this matter of
technique is to say that it is the eloquence of art. When a speaker has
the gift of fine oratory we hang upon his words and gestures, we are
spellbound by his intensity and his style, no matter on what subject he
chooses to address us. I fear some people confuse technique with the
use of a slashing brush and big rough strokes of paint. Let me refer
them to the works of the Primitives or to Holbein, whose calm surfaces
show us one of the world’s greatest masters of the technical side of
art.”[13]
[13] “Notes from Talks by William M. Chase” in _The American Magazine
of Art_, September, 1917.