Interpretive Resource

William Merritt Chase figured prominently in the American art world, both as a painter and teacher. His career began with an extended educational trip to Europe in the 1870s, but unlike expatriates Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and James McNeill Whistler, Chase chose to establish his studio in New York. There, he applied lessons learned abroad to the American scene, painting portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and genre subjects. A City Park is one of a group of works from the mid-1880s in which Chase explored the green spaces of New York City. In this case, the setting is most likely Tompkins Park, in Brooklyn.

Dominating the composition is one of the park’s wide, straight paths, along which women and children promenade. Chase probably executed this scene en plein air. As he described his process, "When I have found a spot I like, I set up my easel, and paint the picture on the spot." The spontaneity of the artist’s approach is demonstrated here by the placement of the stylishly dressed woman in the foreground. She turns toward the viewer, as though she has just encountered someone she knows walking down the path. This emphasis on capturing the moment, as well as the choice of subject, aligned Chase with the French Impressionists, whose work he saw in Paris and again in New York City, at a large exhibition organized by dealer Paul Durand-Ruel in 1886. Chase shared the Impressionists’ interest in representing the leisure activities that took place in city parks, and in addition infused his scenes with a distinctively American aura of pastoral gentility compatible with the aims of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Ffaux, the accomplished landscape architects who designed Tompkins Park.