William Merritt Chase, born in 1849 in Indiana into a “poor but proud” family, went on to become the very model of a suited and booted dandy. As a young man, he sold shoes at his father’s shop to Victorian ladies in Indianapolis and was an excellent salesman; later he confessed that he always sold a size too small so customers would come back sooner.
Chase became a celebrated and famous society painter who walked his wolfhound around Greenwich Village. In 1879 he moved to a huge and handsome space in the Tenth Street Studio Building, a designated space for artists in New York, which he filled with intriguing objects that included a stuffed swan and flamingo, African and Japanese masks, tapestries, and Venetian drapes. This splendid space was inspired by his travels to Munich in 1872, where he spent time at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, honing his skills and picking up the habits of European artists, whose ateliers were creative expressions of themselves. His studio became an extension of all the qualities he embraced and espoused; it was a rich and luxurious environment in which to work.
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William Merritt Chase, 1900.
At Tenth Street, Chase would receive guests, hold parties, and perform tableaux vivants, for which he would don fancy dress such as “velvet breeches and frilled collars.” While painting he wore a white flannel suit; when he went out on the town, he dressed flawlessly in a top hat and shoes with spats, a pince-nez hung around his neck with a black silk ribbon. John Singer Sargent painted him in 1903 wearing white tie and tails, holding a paintbrush and palette, and flourishing his immaculately groomed handlebar mustache. Self-Portrait in 4th Avenue Studio (1915), created just before he died at the age of sixty-seven, shows Chase characteristically elegant in a brown, velvet-collared smoking jacket thrown over a formal black suit, facial hair and monocle in place, his distinctive panache captured in time. Chase fashioned a discerning persona and painted himself the way he wanted the world to remember him.
As far as women’s clothes were concerned, Chase had an expert eye, and his portraits of American society women wearing the latest fashions are renowned. Unusual for the time, many of his models affected strong, liberated poses in his progressive compositions; the irony was that while holding these poses they routinely wore ornate and severely restricted clothing. Such garb was de rigueur for a rich man’s wife, as Edith Wharton documents in her novels of the period. Chase, however, was drawn to assertive women who were beginning to break the traditional feminine mold. Portrait of Lady in Pink (1888) is an image of Mariette Leslie Cotton, a pupil of Chase who would become an internationally acclaimed artist herself. She was part of a new wave of American women who were making their lives their own. In Chase’s portrait she wears a satin and tulle evening gown adorned with ribbons and bows; the dress is corseted but her posture and expression are not. The painting also reflects the remarkable handiwork of the couture gown.
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From left: Artists and friends Mortimer Luddington Menpes, William Merritt Chase, and James McNeill Whistler. This image is from Menpes’s book, Whistler As I Knew Him (1904).
Do not imagine that I would disregard that thing that lies beneath the mask . . . but be sure that when the outside is rightly seen, the thing that lies under the surface will be found upon your canvas.
—William Merritt Chase, from American Iconology: New Approaches to Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature by David C. Miller, 1995
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William Merritt Chase, Self-Portrait in 4th Avenue Studio, 1915.
Analyzing Chase’s work offers insight into the contents of the highest-end wardrobes of the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. His 1879 portrait of Harriet Hubbard Ayer shows her wearing a black dress by Frederick Worth; its lace sleeves and gauzy trumpet cuffs call to mind Karl Lagerfeld’s Métiers d’Art collections for Chanel, which showcase the craftsmanship and beauty of specialist textiles and embroidery artisans. A moneyed socialite who didn’t need to work, Ayer became a pioneering businesswoman who launched the first cosmetics company in America in 1886, and later a successful journalist. Ready for the Ride (1877) is painted in the style of an old master but includes a modern twist; his model is about to go horseback riding and is pulling on a pair of soft yellow leather gloves. Her outfit is elegant but unfussy, designed for a strenuous side-saddle gallop. And although the elaborate formalities of nineteenth-century womenswear are clearly defined, the subject’s direct stare is confident and unapologetic, signaling a new era on the horizon.
Chase founded the Chase School of Art in 1896 in New York; it would go on to become the Parsons School of Design, which counts Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs, and Donna Karan among its alumni.
Among Chase’s students was Georgia O’Keeffe, who said, “There was something fresh and energetic and fierce and exacting about him that made him fun.” He also taught Edward Hopper, who mentioned this fact on his business cards.