This summer, The Heckscher Museum of Art
in Huntington, NY will present Paper Chase: Works on Paper by William Merritt Chase and his Contemporaries.
William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) was one of the most important American artists of his period. A pivotal figure in the creation of American Impressionism, Chase was also profoundly influential as a tastemaker and as a teacher. Paper Chase: Works on Paper by William Merritt Chase and his Contemporaries will feature works by artists associated with all aspects of Chase's career, including friends Frank Duveneck and John Henry Twachtman from his student years in Munich; Tile Club associates Edwin Austin Abbey, Winslow Homer, and Julian Alden Weir; friend and Society of American Painters in Pastel president Robert Blum; and other artists such as Childe Hassam, Maurice Prendergast, and Edward Steichen. The most prominent among Chase's thousands of students at the Art Students' League in New York, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and his Shinnecock Summer School of Art on the East End of Long Island will be represented as well, including Reynolds Beal, Guy Pène du Bois, Rockwell Kent, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Joseph Stella, and Helen Torr. Artists Chase admired, such as Thomas Anshutz, Mary Cassatt, Alfred Maurer, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler, will also be represented.
Paper Chase will offer a broad overview of American art during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, focusing on the development of the various paper mediums. While the painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of Chases era have been the subject of numerous exhibitions, the prominence of works on paper during this period is less well known. The exhibition will include about fifty watercolors, pastels, and prints, highlighting works from the Baker/Pisano collection that was received by the Heckscher in 2001, and with loans from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library, and Yale University Art Gallery, among others.