CHASE,William Merritt (1849-1916)

[Copy of Velázquez’s Aesop]

Oil on canvas, 
70-1/2 x 36-3/4 in. (179 x 93.4 cm), painted at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, in the summer of 1882, in an old, possibly original, 3-in. molded mahogany frame.

References:

Pisano, Ronald G. (completed by D. Frederick Baker and Carolyn K. Lane),William Merritt Chase: The Complete Catalogue of Known and Documented Work by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), vol. 4, Still Lifes, Interiors, Figures, Copies of Old Masters, and Drawings, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 172-74, no. C.25 and fig. C.25A, ill. p. 173.

Smithsonian Inventory of American Paintings Control No. IAP 89780887.

Provenance:

The artist, hung in his rooms at the Tenth Street Studio Building (51 West 10th Street);

His studio sale, American Art Galleries, New York, January 7-11, 1896, lot 1044;

Acquired by The Woman's Art School of Cooper Union, New York;

The Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration (sometime after 1917), deaccessioned 1951 (its tag verso);

Acquired by Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana;

Private collection, Peter D. Caras and Paula Caras Coin, Illinois;

thence to the present owner (the provenance unbroken to this day)

Exhibited: New York, Art Students' League, October 1882.

Back in 1878 from six years enrolled in Munich, Chase set up in the largest suite (previously Bierstadt’s space) in the Tenth Street Studio Building and began 21 years of teaching at the Art Students’ League.  In the era of Whistler, Eakins and Sargent, of Cassatt, Twachtman and Homer, Chase was the pre-eminent American teacher of his time.  Among the vanguard of painters roiling against the norms of the National Academy, Chase was, inter alia, a founder of the Society of American Artists, by 1880 its president, a fraternal tiler in the rambunctious Tile Club, and Twachtman’s anointed successor among “The Ten.”

Chase returned to Europe in the summers of 1881 and again 1882, intent on copying the Spanish masters of the Prado.  Holding Velázquez “the greatest painter that ever lived” (Bryant, op. cit., p.87), Chase painted this “Aesopus” in 1882 and also its companion the “Menippus” (Pisano, op. cit., C.24, p. 172, present location unknown), both hung in his group in that fall’s exhibition at the League.  When he closed his Tenth Street rooms in 1895, he consigned 17 copies of old masters to his studio sale the ensuing January, where at least five, including the “Aesopus” and the “Menippus,” were acquired by The Woman’s Art School of Cooper Union, and at least three others by the nascent Cooper Union Museum, founded by the Hewitt sisters on the fourth floor of their grandfather’s already renowned institution.  Sophia Antoinette Walker, artist and columnist, observed in her contemporary review, “In passing through the upper rooms of Cooper Union recently, one of them disclosed a most welcome surprise.  It was a cause of mourning a year ago when Mr. Wm. M. Chase’s collections were sold at auction, that his superb copies of Velasquez, Hals, etc., should be dispersed.  To produce a copy without servility, in the spirit of the original painting, with broad brush work, large feeling, dash and brilliancy of color, is rare indeed, and stamps a master hardly inferior to those matchless technicians of the great age.  Behold most of these copies by Mr. Chase, perhaps all from the sale, reunited here, the merit of each enhanced by its good company and augmenting that of the whole, preserved to New York by the wise thought and generosity of the Misses Hewitt.  The value of this gallery of copies in its influence upon the pupils in painting of the Cooper Union can hardly be overestimated.”  (“Fine Arts: The Cooper Union Museum,” The Independent, XLIX, no. 2536 (July 8, 1897), p. 17.

From 1878 to 1895 Chase nutured the bohemian surfeit of his Tenth Street rooms as an extension and avatar of his artistic identity and calling.  At the Chase estate sale in 1917 Hassam crusaded the Carnegie Museum of Art to acquire “The Tenth Street Studio” (ca. 1881-1915; Pisano, op. cit., I.55, pp. 121-4), writing to its first director, Beatty, “Get the 10th Street Studio by all means[;] it is the best Chase in existence – very important and moreover an artistically historic canvas.”  In Cikovsky’s estimation, op. cit., p. 10, “The presence of the new art in America was, of course, made apparent in many ways, such as the founding of the Society of American Artists [1877], the establishment of the Art Students’ League [1875], and the organization of the Tile Club [1877] as, respectively, its exhibition and teaching institutions, and its outlet for fun, and by widespread critical sympathy and encouragement.  But it had certainly at its outset about 1880 no more tangible expression, no more clear and available sign of its ambitions and convictions than Chase’s Tenth Street Studio.”  The “Aesopus” hangs at Tenth Street in two extant photographs, one in the collection of the author, Pisano, op. cit., fig. C.25A, p. 174, and another in the Archives, Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, see Tinterow, op. cit., fig. 10.28, p. 285.  Thus, the “Aesopus,” and with it the “Menippus,” reckon not just in Velázquez’s impact on Chase’s painting but also as constituent elements of the artistic persona of his studio.

The 2002-3 exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay and Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manet/Velázquez: the French Taste for Spanish Painting, offers insight into the attraction and reaction inspired by Velázquez’s

originals dated to 1638 and first hung in a royal hunting pavilion outside Madrid.  Javier Portús Pérez 's

catalogue entries (Tinterow, op. cit., cats. 75 & 76, pp. 454-5) suggest that the principal reason for the attention of artists of the second half of the nineteenth century to the “Aesopus” “… is rooted in the pictorial values of the painting: few works show so clearly the artist’s mastery of brushwork and tonal range, as well as his ability to create a truthful, realistic image with great economy of means – a goal European and American painters of the nineteenth century sought to achieve.”  The “extraordinary freedom of execution” of the “Menippus” undergirds this judgment: “The brushstrokes are exactly those needed to create an absolutely truthful image of the philosopher.”  Another reason for the later interest in the “Aesopus” is its narrative content: “Initial surprise at seeing an ancient writer dressed in rags was succeeded by astonishment at how well the artist has brought the philosopher to life.  Although scraggly, tired, and worn out, Aesop approaches the viewer with a proud gaze and does not shy away.   This aspect was noted by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen…, who wrote, ‘one cannot imagine the fabler with any other face’ [footnotes omitted].”

The provenance of this magisterial copy of a capital work of Velázquez is unbroken since Chase painted it.  The paint surface, while dirty and never cleaned, retains its essential integrity.  The dimensions reproduce the life size of the original work (Tinterow, op. cit., cat. 75, pp. 454-5; fig. 9.11, p. 211).

Additional Bibliography:

Bryant, Keith L., Jr., William Merritt Chase: A Genteel Bohemian, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991.

Cikovsky, Nicolai, Jr., "William Merritt Chase's Tenth Street Studio," Archives of American Art Journal 16, no. 2 (1976), pp. 2-14.

Roof, Katherine Metcalf, The Life and Art of William Merritt Chase, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1917.

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