Indiana-born William Merritt Chase lived and painted in Manhattan, Munich, Venice, and the Netherlands.

[“Prospect Park, Brooklyn”]

But he also spent about four years residing in Brooklyn. Between 1887 and 1890, he and his new bride (and eventually their first-born daughter) lived with his parents in a home in the progressive, thriving city.

[“In Navy Yard”]

He was apparently taken by Brooklyn’s lovely new parks and more bucolic sections, as he painted many landscapes and scenes of everyday life in the borough’s less urban outposts.

[“Gravesend Bay (the Lower Bay)”]

His favorite places seemed to be Prospect Park, Tompkins Park (below, now renamed Herbert Von King Park), Gravesend Bay, and even the Brooklyn Navy Yard (above, his wife is holding the parasol).

[“The Park”]

Chase painted these pastoral parts of Brooklyn, “not only because they were part of his Brooklyn surroundings at the time; he also wanted to present them to the world as examples of ‘civilized urban landscapes’ that accorded with the European avant-garde model of modern life,” states the New York Times in an article on a Chase retrospective from 2000.

[“Harbor Scene, Brooklyn Docks”]

By the 1890s, after relocating to Manhattan, he depicted Central Park in several paintings. They are lovely, but his Brooklyn work captures the beauty of the City of Churches in full summer bloom.

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

Reddit

Tumblr

Pinterest

Email

LinkedIn

Like this: Like Loading... Related

Tags: Brooklyn docks, Brooklyn in the late 19th century, old Brooklyn scenes, Prospect Park paintings, Tompkins Park Brooklyn, William Merritt Chase, William Merritt Chase Brooklyn paintings