Gathering Autumn Flowers
1894/1895
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 53.34 × 96.52 cm (21 × 38 in.) framed: 74.14 × 119.7 × 5.24 cm (29 3/16 × 47 1/8 × 2 1/16 in.)
Classification
Painting
Department
CAB
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon
Accession Number
2012.89.1
Art Historical Context
William Merritt Chase’s *Gathering Autumn Flowers* captures a quiet moment of leisure amid nature’s seasonal transition. Painted in oil on canvas between 1894 and 1895, the work reflects Chase’s mature Impressionist style, which blended loose, luminous brushwork with a distinctly American sensibility. As a leading figure of the late-nineteenth-century American art scene, Chase helped introduce European plein-air techniques to U.S. audiences while celebrating everyday subjects drawn from his surroundings. The painting’s modest scale and horizontal format invite viewers to linger over the figur...
About the Artist
William Merritt Chase
Prolific painter of portraits, interiors, still lifes and landscapes, famed for establishing the fresh colour and bravura technique used in much early 20th-century American painting. He was considered the most important American teacher of his time; after teaching at the Art Students League of NY he formed the Chase School of Art in 1896. Comment on works: genre, Portraits