(1849-1916)
William Merritt Chase showed artistic talent as a young boy. He began formal training in art at the age of eighteen with a local portrait painter in Indianapolis. In 1869 Chase went to New York, where for two years he was a student at the National Academy of Design. In 1872, Chase went to Munich to attend the Royal Academy, something that had been his dream for years. In Munich he perfected a quick, bold brushstroke and learned the dramatic Munich "dark manner." A few years later Chase abandoned this somber palette in favor of the lighter tones of French Impressionism.
Chase returned to New York, and in 1896 opened his own art school in the city. Suited to teaching by intellect and personality, he began a long and successful career. He traveled abroad continually, looking at new art and old, and eventually incorporating travel into his teaching career by takings students abroad. Chase's early portraits and figural compositions show backgrounds that are loosely brushed, with abstract geometric arrangements of paintings mirrors and textiles, creating a lively counterpoint of straight and curving forms. Chase was elected president of the Society of American Artists in 1885, a position he held for the next ten years. In 1890 he was elected academician in the Nation Academy of Design.
Chase was a well known and prolific artist. His paintings were admired for their luminous color, virtuoso brushstroke, and assured composition. His work was exhibited widely, and he was an influential teacher whose students included many of America's noted modernist painters - Scheeler, O'Keeffe, hartley and Demuth among them.