That movement was epoch-making. There was awakening to the fact that painting in America as a craft was not technically understood, that it was not properly taught—could not be taught in America. With that came the departure for Europe of many young students and their training in the studios of Munich and Paris. When the Society of American Artists finally got under way in the early eighties its initial reason for existence was that its members at least knew how to paint. They had been abroad and learned the grammar of their art and were now returned to show their countrymen the finished craftsman. Sargent’s influence was largely through the example of his portraits and Alexander’s vogue was to come a little later; but Chase was the one that arrived early in the day, carried the banner, and announced that art had come to town.
All three of these men grounded themselves in technical method which seemed the necessity of the hour, and all three of them have remained so bedded in method that their art has rarely risen above it or beyond it. Chase, more radical than the others, proclaimed his belief that method was art itself and that a brilliant, dashing manner took precedence over matter. He would not admit that art was more than a surface expression. His belief was, of course, properly adjusted to his own mental equipment. He and Whistler, with many another artist, could cleverly compound for qualities
“they were inclined to
By damning those they had no mind to.”
Unconsciously, no doubt, every one’s tendency is to regard his own limitations as self-imposed and his work right in kind if not in degree. Perhaps that is what Chase meant in a talk at the National Arts Club some years ago when he said: “They say I am conceited. I don’t deny it. I believe in myself. I do and I must.” As philosophy that may not be very profound but as a working faith, paint-brush in hand, it is superb. With such faith and purpose Chase produced scores of pictures that showed his declared point of view, and trained hundreds of pupils not only in his enthusiasm but in his own crisp, clean handling. He was a painter from beginning to end, and exemplified the aim and carry of the Society of American Artists better than any one artist of his time.
He came out of the near West, having been born in Williamsburg, Indiana, in 1849. The village was a small one, less than two hundred inhabitants when Chase was a boy, and what elementary schooling he received there may be imagined. His parents were Indiana people, and the home influence probably did not incline him to art. He saw illustrations in magazines and books and that put the childish wish in his head to “make pictures for books.” He drew with colored pencils, had the little water-color cubes known to all children, and soon made a local reputation among schoolmates and family friends for drawing portraits. At twelve his parents moved to Indianapolis, and at sixteen he entered his father’s shoe-store as a clerk. The biographies of painters[12] almost always afford such incidents as these. They are supposed to indicate genius trying to orient itself, but perhaps they are no more than vacillations of the youthful mind. At that time Chase had not definitely decided upon art as a career. At nineteen he thought to be some day a naval officer. As a preliminary step he enlisted as a sailor at Annapolis, and was assigned to the training-ship Portsmouth. He probably did not know what else to do and it was an adventure at least; but he soon discovered that it was also a mistake. His father got him out of it and together they went back to the family shoe-shop in Indianapolis.
[12] There is an excellent biography of Chase—The Life and Art of William Merritt Chase, by Katharine Metcalf Roof, New York, 1917.
There was some more experimental portraiture, with members of the household and the family calf as models, and then Chase was sent to a local painter by the name of Benjamin Hayes, who accepted him as a pupil. Art definitely began for him then and there. He was with Hayes several months—long enough to take a studio and set up as a painter on his own account. At twenty he went to New York with a letter to J. O. Eaton, whose pupil he became and with whom he remained for two years. He seems to have had an early liking for independent quarters, for while a student in New York he set up another studio in Twenty-third Street. After his two years with Eaton he once more went back to the paternal roof, then in St. Louis. Here he occupied a studio with J. W. Pattison, and for a year painted pictures, principally pictures of still-life. Then he happened to see a picture by John Mulvaney, and that gave him the idea of going abroad for study.
Some St. Louis patrons advanced money to him and he went to Munich—a city at that time perhaps more frequented by art students than Paris. Duveneck, Dielman, Currier, Shirlaw were there, and Chase at once entered into the student life of the city. He was enrolled in the school of the Munich Royal Academy, with Kaulbach at its head, and he was also a student under Piloty; but the outside influence of Leibl was potent upon all the Munich students at that time, Chase included. In addition he studied to his profit the old masters in the Alte Pinacothek, especially Van Dyck, and was susceptible to impressions from Duveneck and perhaps Habermann, a German student friend. Some years ago in a European retrospective exhibition I was struck by a Habermann portrait that was practically a duplicate of Chase’s “Ready for the Ride,” but whether it was Chase following Habermann or Habermann following Chase, I could not determine.
With his various activities Chase cut quite a figure in the student world of Munich and was regarded as a coming man. He won competitions, painted Piloty’s children, painted “The Turkish Page,” the Duveneck portrait called “The Smoker,” “The Jester,” “The Dowager,” “The Apprentice Boy,” “The Broken Jug,” and other works. A chance to review some of these pictures was recently afforded at the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco, where Chase was represented by a roomful of pictures, and many people were astonished to find how very solidly and beautifully painted were these early examples. They were, of course, dark in illumination with some bitumen in the shadows. It was studio light, not plein air that Munich taught. It took Chase a number of years to arrive at a higher key of light, but in other matters of technique he had become something of a master before leaving Munich—so much so that he was asked to remain as an instructor in the Bavarian Academy. He declined, however, and in 1877 went to Venice, where he joined Duveneck and Twachtman and remained for nearly a year.