William Merritt Chase worked at a period when the terms of art itself were being renegotiated.
The record lists William Merritt Chase as American painter (1849–1916).
William Merritt Chase was born at Nineveh in 1849. His recorded nationality is United States. He trained at Academy of Fine Arts, Munich.
The nineteenth century broke the academy's authority: independent exhibitions, dealers and the beginnings of modernism.
He worked as painter and photographer.
His recorded movement is impressionism.
His best-known work is Still Life with Watermelon. An artist's reputation moves with taste, but the work stays exactly where it was left.
That the work was made in United States shaped it: artistic traditions, academies and the galleries that decide what is seen have never been evenly distributed.
William Merritt Chase died in 1916, aged 67. The work remains, hanging in collections that outlived both the artist and the market that first priced it.
Achievements
- Notable work: Still Life with Watermelon
- Movement: Impressionism
