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This portrait is included in Ronald Pisano’s recently
published book, William Merritt Chase, Vol. II Portraits in
Oil: The Complete Catalogue of Known and Documented Work by William
Merritt Chase (1849-1916). New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2007. See page 39, OP.84. Pisano notes the atypical traits
of this work, including its small scale, that it was done on
canvas rather than panel, and that most of his other portraits
leave more open space around the sitter. He notes, however, that
there are several telling traits that identify Chase’s work:
the mahogany background with dull dark green accents, the way
the bangs of the girl’s hair are brushed into the wet paint
of her forehead, the heavy buildup of paint to create form in
the features of the face, bright light on one side of her face
and the other in shadow, and the freely painted bow that enlivens
the composition. Pisano dates the painting to ca. 1880, largely
because it postdates Chase’s Munich style but must be dated
before 1881-82 when Chase stopped using bitumen, which is present
in this work.
In 1880, thanks to Frederick Church, Chase became a regular
visitor to the home of Julius Gerson, whose three daughters were
eager to meet the artist who painted “Ready for the Ride”,
Chase’s 1878 masterpiece. Alice Gerson was 14 years old
at the time, and according to Barbara Gallati (in William Merritt
Chase. New York: Abrams, 1995, p. 27-28) he, like Church, began
to sketch Alice and her older sister, Virginia. Six years later,
Chase and Alice were married. A photograph in the collection
of the Parrish Art Museum, reproduced in Gallati’s book
on p. 68, and dated to c. 1888, features Chase, Robert Blum,
Alice, and an infant, Alice Dieudonnee, around a dining room
table. The features of Chase’s wife are strikingly similar
to those in this portrait of a young girl; but it is the penetrating
gaze that is the most telling. It is entirely possible that this
is Chase’s earliest extant image of his wife to be, Alice
Gerson. In bringing her face so uncharacteristically close to
the picture plane, Chase seems to be returning her intense gaze.
William Merritt Chase is among the foremost American artists
of the 19th and early 20th centuries, personifying the turn-of-the-century
“bon vivant” artist. Chase was born in Williamsburg,
IN, and by the age of twenty-two was studying at the Royal Academy
in Munich under Karl von Piloty. By 1878, he was in New York
City teaching at the Art Students League, one of the many institutions,
including the Chase School in Shinnecock, Long Island (1891-1902)
in which he was a popular master teacher. His space in the Tenth
Street Studio Building in Lower Manhattan, lavishly appointed
with exotic furnishings, became a popular meeting place for the
streams of artists who traveled back and forth between Europe
and New York in that period. Chase, himself, returned to Europe
frequently.
While he is noted mainly as a landscape, still life, and interiors
painter, he was also a consummate painter of non-commissioned
portraits, most often painting people he knew intimately.
The provenance of this portrait is partially revealed by two
stickers on the reverse of the frame, one reading, “William
Merritt Chase, Portrait of a Man” and another, “Portrait
of a Young Girl Mary Leonard Ram, 3668 Erie Avenue, Cincinnati,
Ohio 45208.”
The painting has been recently cleaned. It is on stable, un-lined
canvas and is on its original stretcher. There is a craquelure
pattern throughout the paint surface, and has small areas of
in-painting along the edges and in a few of the craquelure lines. |
