William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849 – October 25, 1916) was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher.
He was born in Williamsburg (now Nineveh), Indiana, to the family of a local merchant. Chase's father moved the family to Indianapolis in 1861 and employed his son as a salesman in the family business. Chase showed an early interest in art, and studied under local, self-taught artists Barton S. Hays and Jacob Cox.
After a brief stint in the Navy, Chase's teachers urged him to travel to New York to further his artistic training. He arrived in New York in 1869, met and studied with Joseph Oriel Eaton for a short time, then enrolled in the National Academy of Design under Lemuel Wilmarth, a student of the famous French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Chase's creativity declined in his later years, especially as modern art took hold in America, but he continued to paint and teach into the 1910s. One of his last teaching positions was at Carmel, California in the summer of 1914. Chase died on October 25, 1916 in his New York townhouse, an esteemed elder of the American art world. Today his works are in most major museums in the United States. - wikipedia
