Chase, William Merritt (1849 - 1916)

Painter; born in Williamsburg, Ind. Showing a natural talent for painting, he was sent abroad in 1872 to study, funded by a group of St. Louis businessmen. Although he studied at the Munich Royal Academy, when he returned to America he had converted to the French Impressionist style and in 1878 he began teaching at the Art Students League in New York City. Both there and at his own summer school at Shinnecock, Long Island, he produced a large body of sensuously colored, detailed work, such as Lady with the White Shawl (1893), and taught a whole generation of American painters.