Lady in pink and her creator

I found this picture on the screen of my computer by chance, in search of the work of a completely different artist; It was called the "lady in the pink" and belonged to the brush of William Merrit Chase. I have never heard this name; The picture seemed so dazzling to me that I decided to find out anything about the author-he could not write so masterfully a single picture!

Well, of course: William Merrit Chase (1849–1916) is a famous American The artist, and I was not at all interested in American painting. The Internet makes it possible to see more than 300 works of Chase in good resolution [1]. Of course, the screen is not a canvas, but which of us, not being a professional, can boast of the fact that he saw “everything” or even “almost everything”, well, for example, Kramskoy? ..

William Merrit Chase was born in 1849 in Williamsburg (Indiana) in the family of a businessman. He took lessons from local artists, then he entered the National Academy of Design in New York. He began to exhibit a little, and in 1870, Chase already had orders for still lifes and portraits. His giftedness was noticed, and the businessmen of the city of Saint Luis, where he moved to help his family, invited Cheiz to subsidize his further studies in Europe.

Chase was happy and chose not Paris, but Munich - as a place more suitable for concentrated work. Subsequently, he returned to the States and over the years became a kind of elder of American painting.

Chase worked in all genres, except perhaps battal: he wrote portraits, landscapes, still lifes, less often - genre scenes.

Chase is considered an impressionist - at least, this is what they write about him in encyclopedias and reference books. It’s easier to say who he was not: he was not an academician - I would say that for the academic He was too brilliant and peculiar to the artist, and maybe wayward.

Chase was happily married, he had eight children, he led the life of a secular man - and at the same time he worked a lot, including taught. Apparently, teaching was a passion for him: in 1891, Chase opened his own summer school in the resort town of Shinnecock, where he spent summer with his family from 1891 to 1902. Numerous Linnecok landscapes are written by Chase in a purely impressionist manner.

He also founded the art school in Manhattan (Chase School of Art in Manhattan), etc. Chase repeatedly drove his students to museums in Europe, in particular to the museums of Holland. Several generations of American artists considered him their mentor.

His famous “Studio on the 10th Street” was simultaneously a salon, an artist studio and a kind of museum-Chase was a passionate collector of rarities and just beautiful things.

He was not passed by the universal hobby to all Japanese - he repeatedly wrote young women in the kimono, with Japanese fans and dolls, etc.

Chase posed for many of his famous contemporaries. Chase also left us portraits of his wife and children. It seems to me that it was Chase that belongs to the best portrait of Wistler - it is not surprising that Dandy and Zadir Wistler, seeing this portrait, was furious. Chase himself in self-portrait (and in the photo) most of all resembles the Russian intellectual of the 80s and 90s of the XIX century.

1. William Merritt Chase - The Complete Works. www.william-merritt-chase.org .