William Merritt Chase - Study of Flesh Colour and Gold [1888]

William Merritt Chase - Study of Flesh Colour and Gold [1888] , a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Here Chase applied the pastel relatively densely and with exceptional vigor, maneuvering the coloured crayon as one would a brush loaded with oil paint. In keeping with the contemporary vogue for Japonisme, Chase (like Whistler) adopted Japanese props. He tilted the picture plane and cropped the composition, devices common to Japanese prints. Like Kitagawa Utamaro, whose eighteenth-century prints were coveted by avant-garde artists at the time, Chase focused on the figure’s bare back. But he heightened the effect, to the point of its being somewhat startling, by placing the model in the extreme forefront of the composition, adding a modern sensibility to a traditional Japanese subject.

[Pastel on paper, 45.7 x 33 cm]