Nov 15, 2012 - Sale 2294

Sale 2294 - Lot 6

Price Realized: $ 720
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
AMERICAN SCHOOL, LATE 19TH CENTURY
Portrait of William Merritt Chase.

Oil on card stock. 155x155 mm; 6 1/8x6 1/8 inches.William Merrit Chase (1849-1916) was one of America's foremost plein-air painters and important teachers. Locating in New York after his studies in Europe, he taught at the Art Students League from 1878 to 1894 and also founded the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art in 1891 near his summer home on eastern Long Island. This was America's first plein-air painting school, evoking the French schools abroad, and helping to bring Impressionism to an entire generation of American artists. Notable students included Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Gifford and Reynolds Beal, Daniel Garber, Charles Webster Hawthorne, Edward Hopper, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, and Martha Walter, among many others.

Known for his flamboyant manor, in this portrait Chase is pictured with his dramatic Van Dyck beard and mustache, a style he maintained all his life.