"Bringing the Museum to You"

The Cyber Art Show continues our study of Impressionist landscape painters in the Public Domain with a two-part Exhibition of works by American artist William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), who founded the Chase School, which later became Parsons The New School for Design. Born in Indiana, Chase showed an early interest in art and studied under local, self-taught artists Barton S. Hays and Jacob Cox.

 

After moving to New York in 1869, he met and studied 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. n 1870, Chase to left New York for St. Louis, Missouri to be with his family. 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 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 Europe Chase studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, under Alexander von Wagner and Karl von Piloty, and befriended American artists Walter Shirlaw, Frank Duveneck, and Joseph Frank Currier. Chase traveled to Venice, Italy in 1877 with Duveneck and John Henry Twachtman before returning to the United States in the summer of 1878.

 

Chase won many honors 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 died on October 25, 1916 in his New York townhouse, an esteemed elder of the American art world. He was interred in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York. Today his works are in most major museums in the United States. His home and studio at Shinnecock Hills, New York was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 as the William Merritt Chase Homestead.