Dorothy in Pink
Dorothy in Pink
- portraits
- women
- 19th century American
- American
- American Impressionism
- American
After five years studying at the Munich Academy, capped off by nine months in Venice, Chase returned to New York in 1876 where he taught at the Art Students League. The elegant realism of his early style was said to give way to the brighter palette of the French Impressionists, after the artist Alfred Stevens asked him after a studio visit in 1881, “Why do you want to look like the old masters?” Chase went on to become one of the most highly regarded American Impressionists and influential teachers of the next generation, whose students included such diverse talents as Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O’Keeffe.
This is a portrait of the artist’s third of eight children, likely done when she was in her late teens. It may have been done as a pendant to a painting of the artist’s wife, which is of around the same size and format, showing Dorothy’s mother seated at three-quarter length. By this point in Chase’s career, he enjoyed all the trappings of a successful gentleman artist, holding regular Salons at his spacious studio on Tenth Street in New York, filled with his art, as well as the collectibles he brought home from his many travels abroad. The loose, brilliant brushwork and light palette are characteristic of Chase’s mature style, which offered a pleasant alternative to the more sober Realism of Thomas Eakins.