Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300110200 ISBN 13: 9780300110203

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2009

Admired for finding beauty in everyday surroundings, William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) brought an autobiographical element to his work, earning him a unique place in late-19th-century American art history. This book, the third of four volumes to document the complete works of Chase, traces his career as a landscape painter.

Following Chase’s training in Munich in the 1870s and his many trips to Spain in the early 1880s, his works became light filled and colorful. These paintings anticipate Chase’s well-known park scenes of the 1880s painted in Brooklyn and New York and his 1890s works depicting the hills and shoreline adjacent to his home in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, now recognized as being among the most important examples of American Impressionism. This book presents all of his known landscapes painted in oil, which include many of his best-loved works, in beautiful reproduction, accompanied by the most current and thorough documentation on them.

About the Author:

Ronald G. Pisano, who was curator of the Heckscher Museum of Art and director of the Parrish Art Museum, researched and prepared the complete catalogue of Chase’s work for over thirty years before his untimely death in 2000. Carolyn K. Lane is a Ph.D. candidate in American art at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. D. Frederick Baker is a director of the Pisano/Chase Catalogue Raisonné Project.
 

From School Library Journal:

This third volume in a four-part catalogue raisonné on Chase covers Chase's paintings of the 1880s and early 1890s and reproduces a variety of paintings (49 in black and white, 209 in color) that together give marvelous insight into his exemplary depiction of light and shadow. Much of his work shows various vantages of Shinnecock Hills, Long Island, and surrounding environs in New York; however, Chase's trips to Munich, Spain, and Italy helped the progression of his skills, and some work done overseas is included. Pisano, who was curator of the Heckscher Museum of Art, painstakingly researched documentation of Chase's works to create this complete retrospective but unfortunately passed away before the project was completed; this volume was finished by Ph.D. candidate Carolyn K. Lane. One cannot help but wonder, in spite of the thoroughness of representation and documentation of paintings, if Pisano would have added essays or other writings to flesh out Chase as a man and artist. Even without extra text, this volume serves a valuable purpose for scholars of art and art history.—Nadine Dalton Speidel, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.