Abstract

William M. Chase

This article focuses on the works of artist William Merritt Chase. The best of Chase went into his painting and his teaching, and there is little left that can be carried over into print. He had a certain personal picturesqueness, carefully preserved, but he was not an articulate person and had a distrust, not uncommon among artists, of those who were more articulate than himself. This is further advocated by the biography "The Life and Art of William Merritt Chase," by Katherine Metcalf Roof. With all the variety of his production it is in pure still life that Chase was most wholly successful. The kind of art he both preached and practiced is, essentially, the treatment of everything in terms of still life, and it is in still life that it finds its best material.