A City Park

CC0 Public Domain Designation

c. 1887

William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916)

In the late 1880s, William Merritt Chase painted a series of works focused on the public parks of Brooklyn and Manhattan, including A City Park. Amid rapid growth in New York and other US cities, such green spaces offered respite as well as novel venues for social activity. Inspired by the works of French Impressionism, Chase experimented with dramatic spatial effects, open brushwork, and a high-keyed palette. The composition’s small scale suggests that the artist painted the canvas outdoors, opting for portable materials to work on-site in an urban setting.

Status: On View, Gallery 161
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: William Merritt Chase
Title: A City Park
Place: New York City (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: c. 1887
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed, lower right: "Wm M. Chase."
Dimensions: 34.6 × 49.9 cm (13 5/8 × 19 5/8 in.)
Credit Line: Bequest of Dr. John J. Ireland
Reference Number: 1968.88
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/28849/manifest.json

M.G. Van Rensselaer, “William Merritt Chase,” American Art Review 2 (1881), 91–98.
Montezuma, “My Notebook,” Art Amateur 18, 2 (Jan. 1888), 28.
Keon Cox, “William M. Chase, Painter,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 78, 466 (Mar. 1889), 549–57.
“Mr. Chase’s Pictures,” Chicago Tribune, Sept. 15, 1889.
Charles DeKay, “Mr. Chase and Central Park,” Harper’s Weekly 35, 17 (May 2, 1891), 327–28.
“The Slaughter of Mr. Chase’s Pictures,” Art Amateur 24, 5 (Apr. 1891), 115–16.
A.E. Ives, “Suburban Sketching Grounds,” Art Amateur 25, 4 (Sept. 1891), 80–82.
James William Pattison, “An Art Lover’s Collection,” Fine Arts Journal 28 (Feb. 1913), 99–111.
Katharine Metcalf Roof. The Life and Art of William Merritt Chase (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1917).
Abraham David Milgrome, The Art of William Merritt Chase (Ph.D. Diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1969).
Ronald G. Pisano, William Merritt Chase (Watson–Guptill Publications, 1969).
Keith L. Bryant, Jr., William Merritt Chase: A Genteel Bohemian (University of Missouri Press, 1991).
David Schuyler and Jane Turner Censer, eds., The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: The Years of Olmsted, Vaux and Company 1865–1874 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), vol. 6.
Ronald G. Pisano, Summer Afternoons: Landscape Paintings of William Merritt Chase (Little, Brown, and Company, 1993).
William H. Gerdts, Impressionist New York (Abbeville Press, 1994).
Barbara Weinberg et al., American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994).
Barbara Dayer Gallati, William Merritt Chase (Harry N. Abrams Publishers, 1995).
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), 250–52, no. 121.
Stanley Meisler, Smithsonian Magazine (Feb. 2001).
Judith A. Barter, et al., The Age of American Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 2011), cat. 76.
Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection, (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017) p. 60.

Rochester Art Club, Ninth Annual Exhibition of the Rochester Art Club, May 22–June 2, 1888, cat. 10, as A City Park, lent by William Merritt Chase.
Paris, Exposition Universelle, May 5–Oct. 31, 1889, cat. 49, as Un Parc de Ville, lent by William Merritt Chase.
New York, Fifth Avenue Art Galleries, Auction of Paintings by William Merritt Chase, Mar. 6, 1891, cat. 31, as A City Park.
Southampton, NY, Parish Art Museum, William Merritt Chase in the Company of Friends, May 13–June 24, 1979, cat. 8, as A City Park.
Seattle, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, William Merritt Chase Retrospective, Oct. 2, 1983–Jan. 29, 1984; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mar. 9–June 3, 1984, no cat.
Norfolk, VA, Chrysler Museum of Art, Paris 1889: American Artists at the Universal Exposition, Sept. 29–Dec. 17, 1989; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Feb. 1–Apr. 15, 1990, Memphis, Brooks Museum of Art, May 6–July 15, 1990, New York Historical Society, Sept. 5–Nov. 15, 1990, cat. 49.
Brooklyn Museum of Art, William Merritt Chase: Modern American Landscapes, 1886–1890, May 26–Aug. 13, 2000; the Art Institute of Chicago, Sept. 7–Nov. 26, 2000; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Dec. 13, 2000–Mar. 11, 2001, cat. 1.
Philadelphia, PA, Academy of the Fine Arts, The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920, Feb. 12–May 24, 2015; Norfolk, Chrysler Museum, June 16–Sept. 6, 2015; Winston–Salem, MA, Reynolda House, Oct. 1, 2015–Jan. 3, 2016 (Philadelphia and Norfolk only), cat. 35.
Washington, DC, The Phillips Collection, William Merritt Chase, A Modern Master, June 4–Sept. 11, 2016; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Oct. 9, 2016–Jan. 16, 2017; Venice, Ca’ Pesaro–Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna, Feb. 11–May 28, 2017 (DC and Boston only), cat. 32.

William Merritt Chase, New York, from 1887 to 1891; Renaissance Gallery, Philadelphia, by 1950; Graham Gallery, New York City, 1950; Dr. John Jay Ireland, Chicago, 1956; bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1968.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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