The Inner Studio, Tenth Street
Artist: William Merritt Chase (American, 1849 - 1916)
Date: 1882
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. San Marino, CA, United States
Description
In 1878, after returning to the United States from artistic study in Europe, William Merritt Chase rented a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. Designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt and opened in 1858, the building would become home to such well-known American artists as Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and Lockwood de Forest. Chase decorated his studio with collections of art and exotic bric-a-brac that served as subject matter and created a luxurious environment for entertaining patrons and potential clients. Although he included art and artifacts from a range of places, Asian and Middle Eastern objects figured prominently. The loose brushwork of the painting suggests the style of Impressionism, which came to characterize Chase's later work.