William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase | 1849–1916 | James Abbott McNeill Whistler 1885 | Oil on canvas | 188.3 x 92.1cm | Bequest of William H. Walker 1918 (18.22.2) | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York | Photograph courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
James Abbott McNeill Whistler 1885
William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) studied from 1872 to 1878 at the Royal Academy in Munich, which was an alternative to the Parisian academies for some American artists studying in Europe. He returned to New York in 1878 to take a position at the Art Students League, but continued to exhibit in the Paris Salon exhibitions and the 'Expositions Universelles' of 1889 and 1900. In Munich, the work of Wilhelm Leibl was a major influence on the development of Chase’s style. Leibl had looked to the Dutch and Flemish Old Masters such as Frans Hals, Rubens and Rembrandt in the development of his own vigorous brushwork and its emphasis on colour and tone. Chase’s paintings adopted a similar lose vitality. Having avoided extensive immersion in academic principles, Chase was more susceptible than many of his American contemporaries to the growing appeal of the French Impressionists, whose works were increasingly visible in Boston and New York exhibitions in the early 1880s.
Chase’s portrait of James Abbott McNeill Whistler poses the artist as the flamboyant and aristocratic figure that he was. The cane and tunic coat impart a tone to the painting, which Whistler, not impressed with the foppish manner in which he was depicted, described as ‘a monstrous lampoon’.
