First Touch of Autumn

          Artist: William Merritt Chase
Title: First Touch of Autumn

   Media: Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: 40-1/8 x 50-1/8 in.

    Date: 1898

 

William Merritt Chase was born November 1, 1849 in Williamsburg, Indiana. He was an American painter and also known as a teacher. After a brief incident in the navy, his teachers urged him to further his artistic training. In 1869 he arrived in New York and studied with Joseph Eaton for some time. He then enrolled in the National Academy of Design. He exhibited his first painting at the National Academy in 1871. William traveled to Europe and settled in the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, a long-standing center of art training that was attracting increasing numbers of Americans. He traveled to Venice, Italy in 1877 before returning to the United States in the summer of 1878. He expressed an interest in teaching and opened the Shinnecock Hills Summer School on eastern Long Island, New York in 1891 and taught there until 1902.  He also opened the Chase School of Art in 1896, which became the New York School of Art two years later with William himself staying on as an instructor until 1907. He married Alice Gerson in 1886 and together they raised eight children.He was know to use media mainly of oil painting and pastel, but also created watercolor paintings and etchings. This painting, First Touch of Autumn resides in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. "Chase cultivated multiple personnae: sophisticated cosmopolitan, devoted family man, and esteemed teacher." In regards to this painting, Anonymous states "The artist captures the low and rolling, flat terrain of the Shinnecock countryside, with its occasional tree, sand dunes, and dwarfed bushes." I chose this image because of the background behind it. This painting has to do with the Shinnecock countryside and this is where William Chase would open up a school. I enjoy paintings with a meaningful background behind it, or a memory associated with it. Although I didn't paint this and I have never been to Shinnecock, I think it's so neat that a place he opened up a school for others, he was so fond of he painted something that relates to the city and it is now one of his famous paintings that resides in a fantastic museum. This place must've meant a lot to him if he opened a school here and that is very special! This corresponds to my theme because of the beautiful blue sky and the bushes popping up for the Autumn season to begin.