William Merritt Chase’s End of the Season
2008; American Medical Association; Volume: 10; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1001/archfaci.10.6.444
ISSN1538-3660
Autores Tópico(s)Poetry Analysis and Criticism
ResumoArchives of Facial Plastic SurgeryVol. 10, No. 6 Free AccessWilliam Merritt Chase’s End of the SeasonLisa Duffy-ZeballosLisa Duffy-ZeballosSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:3 Nov 2008https://doi.org/10.1001/archfaci.10.6.444AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail At the turn of the 19th century, William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) emerged as one of the most influential artistic teachers in America and a leading member of the group “the Ten American Painters,” also known as “The Ten.” In his paintings, Chase assimilated a wide spectrum of artistic traditions to create a distinctive style, one that was hailed by contemporary art critics as uniquely American. Moreover, Chase's buoyant colorism and his generous, optimistic personality conformed to the popular stereotype of the flamboyant and likeable American artist.William Merritt Chase (1849-1916). End of the Season (ca 1885). Pastel on paper, 14 × 18 in. Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts.Born in Williamsburg, Indiana, to a middle-class family, Chase began his artistic career in New York City, at the National Academy of Design. At a time when young American artists like Theodore Robinson flocked to Paris and Giverny to absorb the lessons of the French Impressionists, Chase traveled to Munich, Germany, with fellow Americans John Twachtman and Frank Duveneck to study the works of the Old Masters. Chase was particularly influenced by the works of the Spanish and Dutch Schools, notably the paintings of Diego Velázquez, Rembrandt, and Frans Hals, eventually blending their realist portrait styles with the plein air elegance of the American Impressionists. Turning down an offer to teach at the Royal Academy in Munich, Chase returned to New York in 1878 and opened his famous Tenth Street Studio in lower Manhattan. He accepted a teaching position at the Art Students League before opening his own school, the Chase School (later called the New York School of Art), in which students would be free from the academic constraints of more formal art academies like the National Academy of Design. Chase was a particularly gifted and popular teacher who served as an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Brooklyn Art School.ref-qbe80006-1(p14) In 1891, Chase opened the Shinnecock Summer School of Art near Southampton, Long Island, New York, where he encouraged his students to study the luminous properties of color and daylight in their open-air studies.Prior to opening the Shinnecock School, Chase frequently taught summer art classes in Spain, France, and the Netherlands. In 1885, he met James Abbot McNeill Whistler in London and the 2 painters agreed to execute portraits of each other. Chase's James Abbott McNeill Whistler (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) depicts the eccentric expatriate in a foppish pose and holding a cane, looking more like a flamboyant dancing master than a distinguished American artist. Offended by the portrait, Whistler never completed his portrait of Chase, and their brief friendship came to an end. However, as Ronald Pisanoref-qbe80006-1(p16) observed, Chase's exposure to Whistler's tonal “arrangements” inspired him to experiment with tonal values and color harmonies in his own works. It is also likely that Chase was inspired by Whistler's successful experiments in the medium of pastel, which Whistler had undertaken in Venice, Italy, during the late 1870s.ref-qbe80006-2Beginning in the early 1880s, Chase had begun experimenting with the tonal variations and expressive potential of pastel painting. Pastel crayons, which are molded sticks of pressed powdered pigments, produce a uniquely soft, textured surface on the paper. Using pastels, artists can produce a variety of pictorial effects in a single painting; by smudging the pigments, the artist can imitate the painterly qualities of oil or capture the creative spontaneity of drawing.During the 18th century, portraitists like Rosalba Carriera and Maurice Quentin de la Tour preferred using pastels for their expressive, spontaneous likenesses. However, because pastel paintings are liable to smudging and deterioration, they generally were considered primarily a feminine medium, more suited to the minor genres of small portrait studies and still lifes. The medium was rediscovered in the mid-19th century by the French Impressionists, who found pastels uniquely suited to capturing the fleeting impressions of sunlight in their works.ref-qbe80006-2 In 1882, Chase helped establish the short-lived American Society of Painters in Pastel and frequently included the Society's unusual monogram of 2 Ps set on a skull on his pastel works.ref-qbe80006-2(p48) The group held its first exhibition in 1884, which proved to be a triumph for the society and a validation of the diversity and immediacy of the medium of pastel. Chase's submissions, which included a small self-portrait (collection of Mr and Mrs Raymond J. Horowitz), were singled out for their expressive painterly qualities.The following year, Chase executed End of the Season (Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts), depicting a fashionably dressed, solitary young woman seated at a deserted table of a seaside resort. Seated with her back to the viewer, she gazes wistfully toward the beach where a group of figures gather around a sailboat on the shore. The diagonal trajectory of her gaze is mirrored in the line of upturned chairs that likewise direct the viewer's gaze toward the shore. In this painting, Chase exploited the versatility of the pastel medium, blending the soft crayon to form a soft, painterly surface in the landscape elements, while combining this effect with the quickly sketched folds in the woman's dress. The sketchy, blurred contours of the tables and chair legs create an impression of dissolving, blinking forms shimmering in the sunlight.Set against the dazzling sun-lit beach and the pale blue sky, the dark slate color of the spindle-backed chairs and tables produces a jolting contrast between the natural elements in the landscape and the inexorable line of chairs on their march toward the sea. Charcoal gray is also repeated in the woman's dress, so that she too heralds the inevitable end of the season. The young woman sits in a nostalgic reverie for the waning summer, but her feather-trimmed, long-sleeved dress and dark felt hat suggest that there is already a chill in the air.REFERENCESPisano R. William Merritt Chase.. New York, NY: Watson-Guptill; 1979 Google ScholarPilgrim D. The revival of pastels in nineteenth century America: the Society of Painters in Pastel.. Am Art J. 1978;10(2):43–62 Google ScholarFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 10Issue 6Nov 2008 InformationCopyright 2008 American Medical Association. All Rights Reserved. Applicable FARS/DFARS Restrictions Apply to Government Use.To cite this article:Lisa Duffy-Zeballos.William Merritt Chase’s End of the Season.Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery.Nov 2008.444-444.http://doi.org/10.1001/archfaci.10.6.444Published in Volume: 10 Issue 6: November 3, 2008PDF download
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