William Merritt Chase and the American taste for Spanish painting

Magazine Antiques, April, 2003 by H. Barbara Weinberg

American painting, sculpture, and architecture between the Civil War and World War I reflected a keen appreciation and absorption of contemporary French styles. Henry James (1843-1916) described the state of affairs in 1887:

It sounds like a paradox, but it is a very simple truth, that when to-day we look for 'American art' we find it mainly in Paris. When we find it out of Paris, we at least find a great deal of Paris in it. (1)

As there was a great deal of Spain in the art of Paris, Spain appeared in American art as well. (2)

The French, the Americans, and artists of other nationalities realized that Spanish art--above all that of Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez--could support their efforts as painters of modern life. (3) The American painter William Merritt Chase recounted his epiphany to the painter Walter Pach (1883-1958) years later. He said that he had copied works by Frans Hals, Velazquez, Rembrandt van Rijn, and others, and tried to emulate their principles. In 1881 the Belgian artist Alfred Stevens (1823-1906) saw Chase's The Smoker (1881, location unknown) at the Paris Salon and counseled him: "Don't try to make your pictures look as if they had been done by the old masters." Trying to follow Stevens's advice that "modern conditions and trends of thought demand modern art for their expression," Chase came to believe that Velazquez's "sublime example" would help him mediate between past and present. Chase observed to Pach,

One reason he [Velazquez] seems so near to us is that he, like ourselves, journeyed to a country where great art of the past was to be seen, and studied and copied there. But what was important to me just at this time was that Velasquez-- with all his acquirement from the masters who had gone before him--felt the need of choosing new forms and arrangements, new schemes of color and methods of painting, to fit the time and place be was called to depict. (4)

The works of James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Chase, John Singer Sargent, and Robert Henri all demonstrate the American enthusiasm for and appropriation of Spanish styles, largely under French influence and the American fascination with Spain that prevailed between 1860 and 1915. (5) Chase, the consummate eclectic among a generation of cosmopolitan artists who wished to create an American art from the best that the world had to offer, epitomizes the multilayered pattern of Spanish influence. (6)

Asked in 1871 by a group of Saint Louis businessmen if he would like to study in Europe with their support, Chase is said to have replied: "My God, I'd rather go to Europe than go to heaven." (7) In 1872 Chase chose to work in Munich rather than in Paris, where the great majority of his compatriots sought instruction. "I had no great esteem for German art," he recalled in 1891. "I knew it was inferior to French art; but I felt, and still feel, that there is plenty to be learnt in any school, and I was anxious to avoid the distractions of Paris." (8)

Chase was enrolled in the Royal Academy (Konigliche Akademie der bildenen Kunste) in Munich from 1872 to 1877, working mainly under Karl von Piloty (1826-1886), a history painter and after 1874 the director of the academy. Crucial to Chase's formation, however, was Wilhelm Leibl (1844-1900), a realist painter five years Chase's senior. He was influenced by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) (who had been in Munich in 1869) and admired Courbet's work and also that of Edouard Manet, both of whom showed that year at the International Art Exhibition in Munich. (9) Under Leibl's influence, Chase developed a lively style featuring commonplace models, flashy brushwork, a dark palette, and dramatic chiaroscuro, all traits inspired by contemporary French realists and seventeenth-century masters.

Works by Leibl's idols could be seen in the Alte Pinakothek, which had many great canvases by Peter Paul Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, and other northern baroque painters, as well as four works by Velazquez (and a few others of questionable attribution), and several each by Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera, and Francisco de Zurbaran. (10)

Chase's informal half-length portraits of his Munich friends and his portrayals of Turkish pageboys and Moorish warriors suggest the influence of the Spanish baroque in their dramatic tonal contrasts and expressive hand gestures. His ambitious "Keying Up"--The Court Jester (Pl. IV) implies that Chase knew Velazquez's images of the dwarfs in the Spanish court, (11) and its lush rosy hues invoke his clerical portraits such as Pope Innocent X (1650, Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome). Chase's Ready for the Ride (Pl. VI) recalls Velazquez as well as Rembrandt in its fanciful costume and dark palette. "Keying UP"--The Court Jester was purchased in Munich by the influential American art dealer Samuel P. Avery (1822-1904) and shown at the inaugural exhibition of the Society of American Artists in New York City in 1878. It helped to identify Chase--then still a student--as a leader of the younger artists who had adopted foreign styles.