William Merritt Chase spent his adolescence in Indianapolis, Indiana, where in 1867 he received his first professional artistic instruction from the portrait painter Barton S. Hays. His study was interrupted that year by three months' service in the U.S. Navy; finding himself unsuited for nautical life, he returned to Indianapolis. Chase went to New York in 1869 and took over Joseph O. Eaton's temporarily empty studio, near the National Academy of Design building, and registered for the Academy's antique class. Two years later, he joined his family in their new home in Saint Louis, where he opened a studio and executed portraits and still lifes.
Financed by local businessmen, Chase left in 1872 for an important six years of study abroad. He enrolled in Munich's Royal Academy, where his teachers included Karl von Piloty and Alexander von Wagner. In addition, he fell under the influence of Wilhelm Leibl, the most radical painter in Munich, whose bold, bravura manner was drawn from the art of Gustave Courbet and the Dutch master Frans Hals. Fellow Americans studying in Munich at the time included J. Frank Currier, Frederick Dielman, Frank Duveneck, Walter Shirlaw, and John H. Twachtman. Chase, Duveneck, and Twachtman spent nine months of 1877 together in Venice. Soon after, Chase returned to New York, where he accepted a teaching position at the Art Students League, thus beginning almost four decades of educating American art students. He became legendary as a tolerant, insightful, and straightforward instructor not only at the Art Students League but also at the Brooklyn Art Association, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and at his own schools, the Shinnecock Summer School of Art on Long Island (1891-1902) and the Chase School of Art in New York (1896-1907).
In New York Chase found ready society in the circle of young, European-trained artists who formed the Tile Club, a bohemian social organization, which took a yearly trip or artistic retreat. Gregarious by nature, he joined other artistic social clubs, and he became active in the Society of American Artists, serving as its president for 1879-80 and again from 1885 to 1895. With such friends as J. Carroll Beckwith, Robert Blum, and H. Siddons Mowbray, Chase remained busy in the early 1880s, taking summer trips to Europe, helping found the Society of Painters in Pastel, and working to organize the Statue of Liberty Pedestal Fund Art Loan Exhibition. By the time he married Alice Gerson in 1886, he had become a fixture in cosmopolitan New York, occupying a lavishly and exotically appointed studio in the celebrated Tenth Street Studio Building.
The bold brushwork Chase had learned in Munich always stayed with him, but shortly after arriving in New York, he abandoned the bituminous dark tones that had also characterized his early style. Instead, he explored the high color and light of plein air park scenes, sparkling figure and costume studies, and from the 1890s the open landscapes of Long Island dunes. Never a painter of probing psychological depth, Chase concentrated on purely formal concerns. His seemingly easy technical virtuosity was made possible by a sure paint application, an avoidance of overly detailed preliminary drawing, and constant attention to value relationships. Despite their facility and attractive subjects, Chase's paintings did not enjoy a brisk market; large sales held in 1887, 1891, and 1896 proved to be financial disasters. Fortunately, he also had his teaching and a successful practice as a portraitist.
Late in life, he enjoyed considerable prominence in the American art world. It was Chase who was invited to fill the vacancy in the exhibiting group known as the Ten American Painters created by the death in 1902 of John H. Twachtman. During the summers between 1902 and 1914, he took groups of students abroad for leisurely painting classes. In 1907 he was able to purchase a villa in Florence. Chase was a faithful contributor to the Academy's annual exhibitions, and he received the Thomas R. Proctor Prize in 1912.
