American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 30

William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916)
Woodland Scene, ca. 1895

Monotype, 8 x 6 in.
Collection of The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York. Gift of
the Baker/Pisano Collection, 2001.9.56

Although Chase rarely dated his work, two monotypes can be
dated to 1912, while he was teaching a summer class in Bruges,
Belgium. A series of self-portrait monotypes was probably
completed in California in 1914 where he had gone to teach a
summer class—letters home refer to his using the rollerwringing mechanism of a washing machine to make monotypes.
Similarly, an embossed New York City art supplier stamp on
the Woodland Scene paper suggests that the work was done
around 1895 in Shinnecock, New York, where Chase had a
summer home and where, nearby, he conducted summer classes
from 1891 until 1902 at the Shinnecock Summer School
of Art.
NOTES:
Baker, Late Nineteenth Century and Early Modernist American Art, 17, illus.
Kiehl, “Monotypes in America in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth
Centuries,” in Painterly Print, 150, cat. no. 49, illus.
Pisano, William Merritt Chase, 61, M. 34, illus.

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