Talk:William Merritt Chase

Paintings

The Moorish Warrior, c. 1875 - THE EXOTIC

Sunlight and Shadow 1884 - VERY GOOD painting

I realized when I was ready with the gallery that this painter has so much more to give - not only some one jester and some small landscapes... He was a good painter and many of his different talents and oevres doesn't show in the article. As it is now it lacks quite bit to show he width of his art. Hafspajen (talk) 14:07, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

• How about a different gallery- paintings
• 
  In The Studio, 1884
• 
  Hattie, 1886
• 
  Young Woman Before a Mirror
• 
  Portrait Of A Lady In Pink, 1888
• 
  Making Her Toilet, 1889
• 
  Portrait Of A Lady 1890

The painting of Lydia Field Emmet it takes up a lot of place in the article and any of the above is more interesting . "William Merritt Chase's style - VERY GOOD PORTRAIT PAINTER " Hafspajen (talk) 14:14, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Adding a gallery to this article was a good move in my opinion, but your edit left the page in a bad state. A group of seven paintings representing single figures—six women and one jester—was captioned "William Merritt Chase's style". A reader may wonder why these seven works should be represented as more indicative of his style than the other works on the page; nothing in the text explains the puzzling caption. "Keying Up" – The Court Jester is mentioned in the article; it seems to me preferable to keep the jpg near the text where the painting is mentioned. And if we want to demonstrate Chase's range, why add a second, similar jester painting from his Munich period?

Sunlight and Shadow is a very good painting, but the jpg misrepresents it as a monochrome in orange. Chase's interest in the exotic, exemplified by The Moorish Warrior, is also represented in Studio Interior. Opinions will differ as to which of his paintings are more interesting. The Lydia Field Emmet portrait—arguably one of his best—is a good example of Whistler's influence on Chase's portrait style, and as a portrait of one of his students it also ties in with Chase's role as a teacher of many notable artists.

Your edit included a final gallery of twelve paintings, one of which lacked any caption, one of which was captioned "1884", and one of which was captioned ", 1890" (i.e., comma 1890). Such sloppiness is out of place in any respectable encyclopedia, and 29 images is quite a lot for a biographical article of this length, suggesting that images are being used as a substitute for text.

Chase was prolific and the article cannot show every one of his paintings. There is positive value in being selective, and the pictures should be adequately supported by the text. Wikipedia's purpose is didactic after all. Otherwise, anyone simply wishing to see a large number of images of Chase's work would do better by using Google images, visiting Commons, or viewing our article's first-listed EL, "322 images by William Merritt Chase". Ewulp (talk) 02:50, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Ewulp's comments above. I think of Chase as an important and influential teacher and as an American Impressionist, who painted landscapes and portraits and interiors. I don't think of Chase as the originator of any particular style; but rather an American exponent of the contemporaneous European styles of the time...Modernist (talk) 12:50, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

I am just adding to this discussion that I have restored the portrait of Lydia Field Emmet to the page, both for the reasons stated by Ewulp above and also because it has garnered even more art historical attention in recent years as the field has turned to women artists/their careers at this time, with this portrait and its portrayal of Emmet in that "old master" style often specifically pulled out to talk about the career "New Woman" painter. For example, Erica Hirshler's (increasingly visible as we enter into this era of Sargent-mania) book and presentations on Chase.

Also I object that it is uninteresting, particularly in showcasing Chase's abilities as a portrait painter. As long as we're talking about interesting, not a single one of his works that I would deem the most exciting have made it onto this page (A Modern Magdalen, his version of Carmencita, Hide and Seek), but an encyclopedia entry is not meant to showcase personal aesthetic preferences. (If it were about my opinions, I would respectfully have a lot to squabble with Modernist about in terms of any American Impressionist as merely an exponent of European styles.) Calliecassidy (talk) 15:14, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Copyvios and Citespam

About these edits: [1] etc. It was part of a spree of copyvio content from a WP:CITESPAM spammer and sockdrawer. Mass reverts due to the spam and copyvios. Also the site had no sourcing or attributions. See the spam blacklist page for more details. Best, - CorbieV ^☊ ☼ 21:25, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

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Essay-like tonal/organizational concerns

Hi! I have just added some tags to the article flagging several issues with it that have been bothering me for months, particularly concerning the "Chase's roles" section. I am currently incredibly busy/new to Wikipedia editing, hence the tagging for now. I plan to come back if the issues are not better resolved by others more capable.

I do not believe that this section is compliant with Wikipedia's MOS or is the most appropriate presentation for a biographical entry in an encyclopedia. To start with, the section title redundantly refers back to the title of the article, which would be an easy fix if the section itself were not inappropriate to the format and style of an encyclopedia. The content is structured like a standard argumentative essay as would be taught in any high school, leading with a thesis claim "Chase cultivated multiple personae: sophisticated cosmopolitan, devoted family man, and esteemed teacher" and then using details pulled from several sources to support this (hence, synthesis). It would be more appropriate to move information on Chase as a father and husband to a personal life section, and then put the information about his teaching in its own section chronologically placed appropriately in his biography. It would be far better to organize the page like:

Summary

Early life and education

Painting career (including the information about his studio, better cited of course, and more accurately expressing his individual achievements like President of the Society of American Artists and deciding to step down from that and join the Ten American Painters, a good source for this could be Ulrich Hiesinger American Impressionism for ex, here we could also include his relationship with his peers and patrons such as John Singer Sargent, Isabella Stewart Gardner)

Teaching (including more information on his students and his relationships with them, like where is Annie Tranquir Lang who traveled with him and may have had a romantic relationship with him and whose portrait of him was misattributed as a self portrait? Also a small note but Shinecock Hill was designed by architect Stanford White but I would need to find a source for that.)

Later career (including California, his purported public clash with Robert Henri of the Ashcan School over modern art which is referenced on other Wikipedia pages of his peers who sided with him like Cecilia Beaux)

Death

Personal life (include here more details about his wife and marriage, I know a few biographers have talked about it being a shot-gun wedding, his wife being very young at the time, the fact that Chase was a friend of her mothers and so painted the family often. There are more than one student biographers have suggested as having an affair with him, especially Lang, where is that???)

Style and subject matter (I think this section is a good addition to keep considering his techniques and teachings were so widely influential in turn of the century American art)

Gallery Calliecassidy (talk) 15:01, 15 April 2025 (UTC)