Sketch

Maker William Merritt Chase (American, 1849 - 1916)

Collections

American Paintings Selections

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Daten.d.

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 22 × 16 in. (55.9 × 40.6 cm.) frame: 27 3/4 × 20 3/4 × 3 in. (70.5 × 52.7 × 7.6 cm.)

InscribedOn proper left stretcher: "W.M. CHASE PAINT[ED] THIS SKETCH WHEN I STUDIED WITH HIM THEN HE GAVE IT TO ME EDITH CATLIN PHELPS"

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Barbara and William Hyland

Status

Not on view

Label TextThis portrait study demonstrates the influence on Chase's work of the fluid brushwork and chiaroscuro, or extreme contrast of light and dark, of 17th-century Dutch and Spanish artists such as Frans Hals and Diego Velázquez.
The painting belonged to Edith Caitlin Phelps (1875-1961), an artist who studied with Chase at the Art Students League in New York from 1892-94. She wrote on the painting's stretcher bars: "W.M. Chase painted this sketch when I studied with him, then he gave it to me." Between 1878, when he became an instructor at the League, and his death in 1916, Chase taught a generation of American artists to paint in his impressionistic style.

Object number2005.9.1