Venice, William Merritt Chase
With this small oil on canvas, painted during William Merritt Chase’s nine-month stay in Venice, the artist turns his attention away from the city’s most distinctive feature, its canals, opting instead to focus on its architectural environment. Rendered in a flat vertical plane of cream and white, this stately waterside manor becomes a site for the play of sunlight and shadow. The presence of a woman leaning out of a window and of potted flowers and plants—all are rendered in small, loose strokes—suggest scenes of everyday life and the still life, respectively.
