Inventory

Portrait of Young Girl

William Merritt Chase
(1849-1916)

Possibly Alice Gerson, Wife of the Artist
Signed in red "Chase" lower right
ca. 1880
Oil on Canvas
8” x 6”
14 ½” x 12 ½” framed

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.

Portrait of a Young Artist at Work 1855

William R. Hamilton
(1795-1879)

Signed and dated on the reverse
Oil on canvas
37" x 29"; 43 ¼" x 35 ¾" framed

William R. Hamilton was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1795 and studied painting in Paris and in London where he was a student of Sir David Wilkie. He was in the employment of the Duke of Hamilton in Scotland until he immigrated to New York in 1832.

A fellow Scotsman, Alexander Masterton, may have been responsible for bringing him to this country. Masterton was a very successful contractor and quarry owner. Hamilton lived with the Masterton family in the 1830's and 40's on Broome Street in Manhattan and in Bronxville, NY while maintaining a studio on Canal Street in Manhattan. During this period he painted individual portraits of the Masterton family, as well as a group portrait of them in 1834 that is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Hamilton was an immediate success in New York, exhibiting at the National Academy of Design from 1833 until 1841 and at the American Art Union in 1839. Although he also painted landscapes, he was primarily a portraitist. He had numerous portrait commissions from wealthy New York families. Three of his paintings are now in the New York Historical Society.

Although Hamilton returned to Scotland at least five times, he died in Cornwall-on Hudson, New York in 1879.

Here the subject is a boy of about thirteen or fourteen who is already an accomplished artist, judging by the scene of a waterfall beneath his brush. Although the painting is signed and dated, 1855, the identity of the sitter remains elusive. While it is tempting to speculate that he is a grandchild of Alexander Masterton, he could well be a member of another wealthy New York family.