- Frank Swift Chase
Infobox artist
name = Frank Swift Chase
imagesize =
caption =
birthdate = birth date |1886|3|12|mf=y
location =St Louis, Missouri
deathdate = death date and age|1958|7|27|1886|3|12|mf=y
deathplace = Benedictine HospitalKingston, New York
nationality =
field =Painting ,Drawing
training = Art Students League
movement =Post-Impressionism
works =
patrons =
awards =Frank Swift Chase (
12 March 1886 -27 July 1958 ) was an AmericanPost-Impressionist landscape painter and a founder of the Woodstock Artists Association inWoodstock, New York , theart colony atNantucket, Massachusetts , and the Sarasota School of Art inFlorida .Education and training
Chase was born in
St Louis, Missouri , on12 March 1886 . The fourth child of Grace Metcalfe and Charles Denison Chase, he attended publicelementary school andhigh school in St Louis. Despite amathematical mind, he did not progress tocollege , instead working as anassistant in his father’slaboratory at theAluminum Company of America inBauxite, Arkansas . His father was an Alcoachemist noted among the pioneers ofexperimentation with the use ofnitroglycerin inmining .In his early twenties he traveled to
New York City to join his elder brother,Edward Leigh Chase , at the Art Students League, and later followed him again to ASL's Art League School of Landscape Painting at Woodstock, where he studied under Birge Harrison and John Carlson in 1909. The Chase brothers, both gifted artists, were early members of the Woodstock artist’s colony, whose participants worked and lived in hand-made Catskill Mountain cabins as part ofRalph Whitehead ’s experiment withutopian living at Byrdcliffe, the Bohemian settlement nestled in theslope s above thetown .Teacher and founder
A
decade later, in 1919, Chase was one of the founders of the Woodstock Artists’ Association, along withAndrew Dasburg , Carl Eric Lindin,Henry Lee McFee , and his former teacher John Carlson. The following year he summered onNantucket Island , where he established his firstart school . From 1920 onward, Chase was the leadingteacher ofpainting there for three decades. Dubbed “the dean of Nantucket artists” by the Artists Association of Nantucket, he was largely responsible for the development of thatcommunity as a true art colony. Among Chase’s most important legacies were his students, including many who became renowned painters themselves:Elizabeth Saltonstall ,Isabelle Hollister Tuttle ,Ruth Haviland Sutton ,Emily Hoffmeier andAnne Ramsdell Congdon . Chase encouraged open-air painting classes,weather permitting, otherwise utilizingwharf cottages along the waterfront, reminiscent of his own tutelage back in the mountain shanties of Woodstock. He helped to establish and nurture the Nantucket Artists Association, along with other influential local artists likePat Gardner ,Sybil Goldsmith ,Philip Burnham Hicken ,Edgar Jenney ,C. Robert Perrin andTony Sarg .Although based in
Manhattan , Woodstock and Nantucket, Chase traveled aroundThe United States . He spent a two-yearstint in southernCalifornia during 1935 and 1936, painting thedesert outside Palm Springs. In 1940, he founded theSarasota School of Art atLongboat Key, Florida , where he taught periodically through 1952. Back in Woodstock, he taught and helped to promote such future notables asHarvey Fite ,Anton Refregier andMarko Vukovic .Death
Chase died at the
Benedictine Hospital inKingston, New York , on27 July 1958 . [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Frank Swift Chase |url= |quote=Frank Swift Chase of Woodstock, a landscape painter, died today in Benedictine Hospital, Kingston, after a long illness.I He was 72 years old. ... |publisher=New York Times |date=28 July 1958 |accessdate=2008-06-01 ] He is buried among otherfamily members in the ArtistsCemetery there.Legacy
Chase's paintings are
heir s of theNorthern Romantic tradition. Clearly influenced in his youth byAmerican Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, he became more faithful tonature as his style matured, many of his later landscapes evoking a spiritualkinship with earlierHudson River School masters likeAlbert Bierstadt ,Thomas Cole andFrederic Edwin Church .His brother Edward Leigh Chase is the paternal
grandfather of the actorChevy Chase .Exhibitions
*
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts , 1918-1923
*Corcoran Gallery , 1919-1923; Newport Artists Association, 1920 and 1924 (first prize)
*Salmagundi Art Club, 1921;National Academy of Design , 1921
*Art Institute of Chicago , 1922 (prize)
*Eastman School of Music , 1922; Rochester Memorial Art Gallery (New York), 1922; Philadelphia Arts Council, 1922
*Minneapolis Institute of Arts , 1922; Herron Art Institute, 1922; Indiana Artists Association, 1923;Carnegie Institute , 1923; Peabody Art Gallery,Baltimore , 1923
*Art Directors Club , 1924 (medal); San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, 1928
*Woodstock Artists Association; Springfield Artists Association; Kenneth Taylor Gallery, Nantucket
*1953; Nantucket Artists Association, 1954.Associations
*Member: Allied Artists Association, 1913
*Springfield Artists Association (Illinois)
*Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts, 1922
*Woodstock Artists Association, 1919
*Nantucket Artists Association.ources
*Woodstock Artists Association, permanent archives.
*Nantucket Historical Association, archives.
*"A Genealogy of David Latham Stevens and Richard Chase Stevens, (Volume IV)", by D.L. Stevens.
*The Nantucket "Inquirer and Mirror"References
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