Anatomy of an Exhibition: William Merritt Chase, A Modern Master

William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) is arguably one of America’s most distinguished artists. His career dates from the end of the Civil War to the stirrings of the First World War. In art historical terms, it spans the tail end of the Hudson River School to the nascent beginning of abstraction.

Although Chase respected his artistic elders, his work looked forward to new ways of expression, best seen in the flowering of Impressionism. He was also an internationalist, embracing Western-centered art, which was beginning to incorporate a world view, especially as it related to the art of Japan. At the same time, he was not wedded to any dictates defining his era.

Modern art is a moveable descriptive, and it is clear that during his lifetime Chase was one of the great American modern masters. He passed the “modern” baton to others as a teacher. Believing it was important to inspire artists to find their own voices, students included Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, Arthur B. Carles, Charles Sheeler, and Joseph Stella.

An exhibition currently at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Merritt Chase, is the first retrospective of the artist’s work in more than three decades. Approximately eighty of Chase’s finest works, in oil and pastel, offer a fresh perspective on Chase’s role in shaping American art. The following provides some insight into the formation of the exhibition.

In early October 2011, I received a phone call from Elsa Smithgall, who introduced herself as a curator from the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.  Because I had overseen the publication (assisted by Carrie Lane) of Ronald G. Pisano’s The Complete Catalogue of Known and Documented Work by William Merritt Chase (1849–1916) (Yale University Press, 2010), Elsa wanted to discuss plans for organizing a Chase retrospective exhibition to mark the hundredth anniversary of his death.

Two weeks after our phone call I met Elsa in New York. We poured through the four volumes of the Chase catalogue raisonné. Elsa proved to have an abundance of infectious enthusiasm for the job ahead. Over the next few months we discussed the exhibition and developed a working checklist.

It was deemed necessary to partner with at least one additional American museum. Although Chase had exhibited widely in Europe, there had never been a solo exhibition of his work outside of the United States; the timing seemed right to also pursue an arrangement with a European museum. Munich was on the list because of Chase’s years at the Munich Royal Academy as a student in the 1870s. Italy was also a strong consideration given Chase’s close ties to that country. Chase first visited Venice in 1877 at the beginning of his career, and last visited in 1913 with his summer school students in tow for a seven-week course of study. Moreover, he set down roots in Italy with his purchase of a villa just outside Florence in 1910. Accordingly, Elsa went to Europe to meet with several museum curators to discuss the project, making it clear that “From the outset, the vision for the project was to shine a light on Chase as both a preeminent American artist and a celebrated international figure who has made a lasting contribution to the history of modern art.”

In fall 2012, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, joined the venture, represented by Erica Hirschler, an expert on John Singer Sargent (who painted Chase’s portrait in 1902). The Terra Foundation for American Art also came on board, bringing the Paris-based Impressionist scholar Katie Bourguignon on as a co-curator for the project, becoming another valued member of the team. Erica later explained what led her to the initial conversation with Elsa about the exhibition, “I had been thinking about Chase for quite a long time since he’s such a wonderful painter and there are very important and beautiful works in Boston-area collections. I had started to speak with a number of colleagues, but it was in a chance discussion with Katie that I learned of Elsa’s interest and proposed exhibition; it was a very happy moment when we all agreed to work together!”

By early 2013, the curators discussed various possible thematic approaches to the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue. The preliminary list of works for the show was refined to reflect the international stature of Chase during his career; his constant exploration of medium; and the evolution of his bravura brush style of painting into what is known as American Impressionism.

In July of 2013, Elsa, Erica, Katie, and I met on a blue-sky, sun-shine morning to visit Chase’s summer home in Shinnecock Hills, Long Island. Designed by his friend Stanford White, the house, equidistant from Peconic Bay to the north and Shinnecock Bay to the south, was the locale for some of his most popular and beautiful paintings. We also looked at his teaching studio (now attached to a private residence), located several miles east of his home, in what is still known as the Art Village. The afternoon was spent with Alicia Longwell, curator of the Parrish Art Museum, in nearby Watermill, going through correspondence and photographs in the Chase archives collection founded by Ron Pisano when he was director of the museum. It was a wonderful, if exhausting trip back to the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth.

By November 2013, the Foundazione Musei Civizi Venezia, with its president Gabriella Belli, had committed to the project, ensuring that Chase would receive his first solo exhibition abroad in the Ca’ Pesaro, a seventeenth-century Baroque palace facing the Grand Canal. Meanwhile, the Terra Foundation offered support for adding outside international and domestic scholars to enrich the planning process with a range of additional perspectives. The Terra also agreed to sponsor a writer’s workshop, where the catalogue’s authors could discuss topics to be covered.

In April 2014, the first round of loan requests for forty-five key works was sent out. The entire team was in place, which now included John Davis, professor of American art history at Smith College (now the executive director for Europe and global academic programs, Terra Foundation for American Art), and Giovanna Ginex, independent curator for the Foundazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

At the writers’ workshop, which took place in November 2014, at the Phillips Collection, John Davis provided fascinating minutiae about Chase, while Giovanna filled us in on Chase’s years in Italy (in addition to his time teaching in Venice, he spent five summers, 1907–1912, teaching American students in Florence).

Everyone discussed the topic he or she would cover in each of the five catalogue essays. I was invited to contribute a Foreword to the catalogue, which I felt should reveal the kind of man Chase was—ambitious, self-assured, ready to try new and different mediums, a joiner of art clubs and organizations, kind and supportive to his students, a loving husband and father, and a voice proclaiming the new role of American art on the world stage.

By early 2015, images were being requested from lenders, the first drafts of catalogue essays were submitted to copy editors, and loan request agreements were beginning to be processed. In May, the final catalogue manuscript was submitted to Yale University Press. Things were moving fast. In July all loans were finalized and digitized images were submitted to the publisher. As the end of the year approached it was time to begin the exhibition design and layout, and planning began for related programs at each museum venue. The final tally of lenders included forty museums and twenty private collections.

In February 2016, while the catalogue was at the printer, shipping arrangements were finalized; crates were built, pickups were organized, last minute inspections of work by conservators were undertaken—with fingers crossed that everything would arrive at the Phillips, safe, sound, and on time. The catalogues were delivered in May, as were all the paintings and pastels making up the exhibition. The works were unpacked and again carefully examined by conservators before being hung on the walls of the Phillips Collection. Just in time for the June 4 opening date. Now at the MFA, Boston, through January 16, 2017, the exhibition will then travel to Venice for an opening in February.

All told, the number of people, either directly or indirectly involved with the exhibition in its different locations, totals around three hundred and fifty. And it all started five years earlier with a meeting of two.

William Merritt Chase is on view at the Museum of Fine Art Boston, through January 16, 2017; it travels to the Ca’Pesaro Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Venice, Italy, February 11–May 28, 2017. The fully illustrated catalogue, William Merritt Chase: A Modern Master, is published by the Phillips Collection in association with Yale University Press; a volume by MFA curator Erica Hirshler, William Merritt Chase, is also available.

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D. Frederick Baker is a director of the Pisano/Chase Catalogue Raisonné Project, a foundation established to complete the life’s work of Ronald G. Pisano (1948–2000).

This article was originally published in the Winter 2016 issue of Antiques & Fine Art magazine, a digitized version of which is available at afamag.com. AFA is affiliated with Incollect.com.