Customer Reviews

William Merritt Chase: The Complete Catalogue of Known and Documented Work by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), Vol. 2: Portraits in Oil

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I recommend this book, but with some hesitation. There are some incredible pieces of artwork in this volume, most notably Chase's portrait sketches, many of which I had never seen before. However, this printing brings up the question "for whom are art books intended ?" I always want the largest, clearest plates with the best colors, but in this book by Pisano, it seems it was more important to list them all, rather than to represent them pictorially in the best light. There are photocopies OF photocopies of some images, and full-page images which are blurry, and yet you still find wonderful little treasures scattered throughout, but printed at only four times the size of a postage stamp.

Why then do I give it 5 stars? The artwork is still wonderful (despite being small and too often B & W), and there is nothing else like it on the market.

I do hope this book on Chase leads to more, and that the next might be made up entirely of larger plates of his color portrait studies; I would pay the same for a volume of 25 of those as I did for this catalog raisonné .

This has to be one of my MOST favourite art books ive ever bought, and i own a few hundred! :O)
The Text, Reproductions and Layout is Superb!, If you are even remotely interested in Painting this has to be a MUST buy!
Being an artist myself, i can say that it is a treat to see WM Chases Portrait sketches which are always left with lovely unfinished brush strokes scattered around the canvas. Something which we dont see enough of, and being a life long student of painting is a pleasure to witness from a time we can now only dream about.
Buy this book and study the gorgeous paintings you will spend a lifetime learning from the Master!

This book is truly a work of painstaking research resulting in beautiful reproductions of works by William Merritt Chase one of Americas leading most brilliant artists of his day. It is the second volume in the Catalogue Raisonnee. His influence is seen in the works of many other leading artists who were his students. William Merritt Chase: Portraits in Oil (Complete Catalogue of Known and Documented Work by William Merritt Chase (1849 - 1916) has 2 more volumes yet to be published by Yale University Press. The artist is my grandfather.

My hands trembled when I first picked up this majestic volume. As a portrait painter myself, I have long been attracted to William Merritt Chase's depictions of the human head, especially his informal studies, which exude so much painterly strength and intimacy. This thick, well-printed collection did not fail to deliver my desire. Along with Chase's best-known salon paintings, readers are treated to an exhaustive catalog of his head sketches and studies, spanning his entire life, from his student efforts to his last great canvases. Many of these were created, it appears, in single sittings from life. The most delightful may be his early works created in Munich. His densely sculpted, heavily-impastoed portraits of wrinkled old men and cocky street-boys allude to the character and gravity of Rembrandts' paintings, showing us that Chase wanted, from the beginning, to follow in the footsteps of "the old masters." His palette begins dark and shadowy as if to suggest that he is channeling 16th century virtuosos.Indeed, as he later develops his style to one akin to that of the Baroque Spanish master Velasquez, we are treated to his experiments and successes in a more delicate and airy style. To view these studies and this progression is a rare education for painters and art-lovers.

A vast book like this impresses with its breadth. (There are hundreds of plates). Yet it also serves to make Chase very very human. Not all of his paintings are masterpieces. In fact, many appear to have been done as informal demonstrations for his students, who no-doubt scrambled to claim them from the easel when the lesson was complete. So he is here, with his occasional flaws and impressionistic shorthand along with his commissioned products.

At his best, Chase was on par with John Singer Sargent. His paintings of wealthy patrons are exactly what was expected of him. Regal, refined and occasionally poetic, they appear effortless and masterful. His flesh is always palpable, and his brushwork is always engaging.

There are a precious few full page details of paintings, in which these choices of brushwork are most instructive and dazzling. I wish there were more, as many of these portraits and studies are in private collections, where we may never actually see them in person. In order to include EVERY known and documented Chase portrait, a few poorly photgraphed examples are included. Some are blurred and exist in the volume only for the sake of complete historical listing.

As an American painter, Chase was certainly a great custodian of the traditions of Munich, France and Spain. This heavy volume shows that he maintained a sense of consciousness about this fact through his career. He created luminous, clear landscapes and figurative interiors of great great charm, but his portraiture- particularly his direct works from the live model- give us the closest images we have of a man simply in love with the act of painting. Buy this book.