Ready for a Walk

One of many images of women by William Merritt Chase that function as elegant studies of type rather than portraits, Ready for a Walk presents an elegant New Yorker standing in full length in an undefined and unfurnished space. The dark muted colors of the subject’s garment and the setting throw into relief the bright accents of her costume and face. The model, about whom little is known, gazes with frank directness at the viewer, apparently stopped only momentarily on her way outside. The impression of arrested activity, coupled with the specificity of her fashionable daytime apparel, lends this portrait the flavor of urban life in the late nineteenth century, anticipating Chase’s role as an interpreter of the modern city through his landscape paintings.

The title of this portrait echoes Chase’s earlier Ready for the Ride (1877, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), another study of a solitary woman, which Chase had painted during his student days in Munich. Ready for a Walk demonstrates the confluence of sources in the artist’s work in the intervening years. Chase’s reliance on contrasts of light and dark rather than color recalls the works of baroque painter Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), whom he greatly admired. Under the Spanish master’s influence, the standing full-length portrait, rendered with minimal setting and a dramatically dark palette, was the subject of artistic experimentation by many of Chase’s contemporaries. Among them was the iconoclastic American expatriate artist James McNeill Whistler, whom Chase met in London in 1885, probably not long before he painted this portrait. Ready for a Walk shares with Whistler’s portraits a concern for tonal harmony, decorative unity of effect, and soft brushwork.

Pictures, Studies and Sketches by Mr. Wm. M. Chase, of New York City, Boston Art Club, Boston, Massachusetts, November-December 1886, no. 23 (as Ready for a Walk).

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Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 1996.

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Deux collections en regard: oeuvres de la Terra Foundation for the Arts et du Detroit Institute of Arts (Side by Side: Works from the Terra Foundation for the Arts and the Detroit Institute of Arts), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, March 2–June 1, 2003. [exh. cat.]

Visages de l'Amérique: de George Washington à Marilyn Monroe (Faces of America: From George Washington to Marilyn Monroe), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2004. [exh. cat.]

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William Merritt Chase , The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, Terra Foundation for American Art (organizers). Venues:The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, June 4–September 11, 2016; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, October 9, 2016–January 16, 2017; Ca’ Pesaro (Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia), Venice, Italy, February 11–May 28, 2017 [exh. cat.]

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Ready for a Walk: Beatrice Clough Bachmann, William Merritt Chase. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, November 1996. Ill. (black & white).

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Side by Side: Works from the Terra Foundation for the Arts and the Detroit Institute of Arts. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text p. 15; ill. p. 14 (color).

Deux collections en regard: oeuvres de la Terra Foundation for the Arts et du Detroit Institute of Arts. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2003. Text p. 15; ill. p. 14 (color).

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Kennedy, Elizabeth and Sophie Lévy. Faces of America: Portraits of the Terra Foundation for the Arts Collection, 1770–1940. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2004. Text pp. 14, 31 (checklist); ill. p. 54 (color).

Kennedy, Elizabeth and Sophie Lévy. Visages de l'Amérique: le portrait dans la collection de la Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1770–1940. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2004. Text pp. 14, 31 (checklist); ill. p. 54 (color).

Lévy, Sophie, et al. Twarze Ameryki: Portrety z kolekcji Terra Foundation for American Art, 1770–1940/Faces of America: Portraits from the collection of the Terra Foundation for American Art, 1770–1940. (exh. cat. International Cultural Center). Cracow, Poland: International Cultural Center, 2006. Text p. 76; ill. p. 77 (color).

Smithgall, Elsa, Erica E. Hirshler, Katherine M. Bourguignon, Giovanna Ginex, and John Davis, William Merritt Chase: A Modern Master. (exh. cat., The Phillips Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, and the Terra Foundation for American Art). With a foreword by D. Frederick Baker. Washington, DC: Phillips Collection; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Text pp. 5, 218 (checklist). Ill. pp. 19, 203 (black & white, appears in installation photographs); p. 116, plate 27 (color).

Green, Dominic. “The Body Eclectic: As artist and teacher, William Merritt Chase showed how American art could take its place within European tradition while breaking new ground for the future.” Art & Antiques 39:7 (Summer 2016): 88-93. Text p. 92, as Ready for a Walk: Beatrice Clough Bachmann.