An Italian Garden

This is an oil on canvas painting which may depict the garden of Chases's Villa Silli, Florence, Italy, in the summer of 1909. The viewer is placed on the central path in the garden. The lightness of the color and pale mauve shadows directly underneath indicate it is around noon. On the right and left of the viewer are blurred beds of color representing a myriad of flowers. The architecture of the middle ground is closely surrounded by trees and shrubs, except for a low fountain gurgling in front of an iron wrought gate. The background of this peaceful scene has cumulus clouds peaking from behind tall trees (some appear to be the traditional poplars) against a light blue sky.		William Merritt Chase
American (1849-1916)
An Italian Garden, ca. 1909
Oil on canvas
Gift of Edward J. Brickhouse
American Art
Location:  Exhibit, Gallery 276
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Dimensions:  H: 16 in, W: 21 7/8 in, FH: 29 1/4 in, FW: 38 3/8 in
Object ID: 59.79.1

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William Merritt Chase
Williamsburg, Ind. 1849-1916 New York, N.Y.
An Italian Garden, c. 1909
Oil on canvas, 16 × 21 7/8 in. (40.6 × 55.6 cm)
Signed lower left: Wm. M. Chase.
Gift of Edward J. Brickhouse, 59.79.1

References: Ronald G. Pisano, Summer Afternoons: Landscape Paintings of William Merritt Chase, Boston, 1993, p. 131; Betsy J. Fryberger et al., The Changing Garden: Four Centuries of European and American Art, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Dixon Gallery and Gardens, Memphis, and University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, 2003-04, p. 100, no. 19.

William Merritt Chase was among the most cultivated and sought-after painters in late-nineteenth-century New York. He treated a broad range of subjects during his long and prolific career: portraits, genre pieces, landscapes, and still lifes. Chase is particularly prized today for his later landscapes, including An Italian Garden. Their plein-air vibrancy and lush, atmospheric brush technique are hallmarks of his mature Impressionist style, which he perfected during the 1890s. From 1905 Chase was a central member of The Ten, the artist's group that did much to foster Impressionism in the United States (see objects 97.11, 71.500, 71.713, 71.618, 71.2153).
A tireless promoter of American art and artists, Chase was also a consummate teacher who left his mark on a generation of younger American painters (see objects 46.76.147, 46.76.137, 46.76.142). After studying at the Royal Academy in Munich he settled in New York in 1878 and joined the faculty of the newly founded Art Students League. In 1896 he opened his own teaching institution in New York, the Chase School of Art, and he also served for years on the faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Between 1891 and 1902 Chase conducted summer art classes at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island. Thereafter, from 1903 to 1913, he took his summer pupils to Europe to study the Old Masters.
Initially Chase chose different sites for these yearly European trips: Haarlem, London, Madrid. From 1907 to 1911, however, he centered his summer sessions in Florence, where he had secured a house, the Villa Silli, in 1907. Situated in the hills north of the Arno, about a half-hour's carriage ride from the city, the villa gave Chase easy access to the great estates dotting the valley northwest of Florence, among them the Villa Corsi-Salviati in the village of Sesto Fiorentino. Dating to the sixteenth century, the Villa Corsi-Salviati had long been renowned for its gardens, and in 1907 the villa's owner, Count Giulio Guicciardini Corsi-Salviati, began a sweeping renovation of the gardens to restore them to their former glory.
As William Hennessey has noted, the sun-soaked setting of the Chrysler's picture is almost certainly a garden of the Villa Corsi-Salviati. The painting, which was probably made during the artist's visit to Florence in the summer of 1909, was shown in 1910 at the National Academy of Design in New York. Ronald Pisano observed that Chase's color schemes brightened dramatically in later years as he responded to Impressionism and the brilliant light of Tuscany. The palette of An Italian Garden-a dazzling medley of pure, primary hues- proves his point with spectacular effect.
Though Chase's posthumous reputation rests heavily on his Impressionist landscapes, his still-life paintings were more highly prized toward the end of his life. He was famed above all for his paintings of fish, a subject that occupied him particularly in the decades around 1900. He even chose fish still lifes as the subject of paintings demonstrations for his classes. "I take the greatest pleasure," he once proclaimed, "in the infinite variety of these creatures, the subtle and exquisitely colored tones of the flesh fresh from the water, the way their surfaces reflect the light." Chase's spare tabletop arrangements of glistening fish set among kitchen vessels were eagerly sought by museums and private collectors, so much so that he came to fear that they would define his artistic legacy.
As seen in the Chrysler's handsome Still Life (see object 71.847), the artist's piscine images typically feature the dark palette and fluent, bravura brushwork that he had perfected during his student days in Munich, while their humble imagery evokes the still lifes of the eighteenth-century French master Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. Painted quite possibly in Venice, Still Lifewas acquired early on by Annie Traquair Lang (d. 1918), a student of Chase who regularly traveled with him and avidly collected his work. After Lang's death, the painting was purchased by New York collector August Janssen, who came to own several other works by Chase.
JCH
 

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