contessanally: Venice: Ca Pesaro - William Merritt Chase - A Painter between New York and Venice

"I am perfectly delighted with Venice. It is a most artistic place that I ever was in."

William Merritt Chase 1877

Venice: Ca Pesaro - William Merritt Chase - A Painter between New York and Venice. At Ca' Pesaro, International Gallery of Modern Art, until May 28, the retrospective dedicated to the American artist William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) - A Painter Between New York and Venice, is curated by Elsa Smithgall and brings together almost sixty of the artist's best works.

Above. Under the William Merritt Chase painting of the Portrait of Mrs. C (Lady with a White Shawl) - 1877, the curator of Ca' Pesaro, Elisabetta Barisoni talks with art historian and independent curator for the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Giovanna Ginex.

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William Merritt Chase - Self-Portrait in the 4th Avenue Studio

1915-1916 - Oil on canvas

William Merritt Chase was a renowned figure in the international art circles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he was an innovative painter of the life of the American bourgeoisie, specializing in portraiture, through a technique inspired by his observation of the masters of European art. In his four-decade-long career, he reports in his work the energy of a nation on the verge of the 19th century, portraying the dynamic evolution of a society, mainly the middle class of Anglo-Saxon descendants, which stars to populate the urban parks in New York, the beaches in Long Island and to get them accustomed to art by visiting exhibitions and artists’ studios.

William Merritt Chase – A Venetian Balcony

1913 – Oil on canvas

Chase’s role inside the academies was as maitre and guide, accompanying students in study courses in the main European cities during the summers between 1903 and 1913. His views of Venice, in 1913, his last summer course in Europe, are characterized by loose brushstrokes, testifying the evolution of the artist’s representation from life, taking in consideration the academic concepts and a vision free from orders and expression of the pure painting pleasure.

Curator of the Terra Foundation for American Art, Katherine M. Bourguignon Croll, senior curator of the American Paintings Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Erica E. Hirshler, historian of art and independent curator for Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Giovanna Ginex and curator of The Phillips Collection, Elsa Smithgall.