Friday, December 09, 2005

Frank Swift Chase (1886-1960) was an American landscape painter and a founder of the Woodstock Artists Association in Woodstock, New York.

See Tom Wolf's essay on the WAA here.

Other biographical material is found here and here.

From A Genealogy of David Latham Stevens and Richard Chase Stevens, Volume IV by D.L. Stevens:
FRANK SWIFT CHASE (1014) The fourth child of Grace Metcalfe 905) and Charles Dennison Chase, he was born March 12, 1886 at St. ouis, Missouri. He attended public schools in St. Louis and Manual training -- no college. He worked with his father in his laboratory with the Aluminum Company of America, as an assistant, in Bauxite, Arkansas. He then went to New York City with his brother, Edward Leigh Chase (1013), to study at the Art Students' League, and at the Art League School of Landscape Painting at Woodstock, New York, under Birge Harrison and John Carlson. He was a landscape painter ever after, and did well. He taught painting in Woodstock and Florida, and for years had a landscape class in Nantuckett, Massachusetts.

1 Comments:

Blogger Larry Stevens said...

Cousin Sharon obtained some wonderful material on Frank Swift Chase and his older brother, Edward "Ned" Leigh Chase. It should probably be noted here that Sharon and I are direct descendants of Chase's parents, Charles Denison Chase and Grace Metcalfe Chase and of Frank Chase's older sister, Lyna Chase Souther.

In addition to copies of passports, letters, and a couple of photos from the kind folks at the Smithsonian Institute, she got a copy of the catalogue from a 1985 exhibition of Frank Chase's paintings at the Vose Gallery in Boston.

The catalogue has color and black-and-white images of Chase paintings not presently available on the Internet, as well as a rich biographical account by Gary Alexander Irving and Frank's son Denison Chase filled with fascinating anecdotes.

Here is an exerpt [more to follow]:

"Frank Swift Chase was born March 12th, 1886 into a St. Louis, Missouri family headed by an Alcoa Chemist that was among the pioneers experimenting with the use of nitroglycerin in mining. The senior Chase must have been pleased with his son's early mathematical abilities but it seems evident from the fact that both Frank and his elder brother Ned so heartily engaged themselves with the arts that such direction must somewhere have been nurtured beyond the fumes of industrial science. In 1909 Frank Swift Chase, following his brother's recent trail, appeared in New York City to study at the Art Students League."

As a descendant of Frank and Ned's older sister, Lyna, I might suggest that the nurturing in the arts that the Chase brothers received most likely came from her. Lyna Chase was a talented landscape painter herself and a founding member of the Springfield Art Association in Springfield, Illinois. Lyna gave up painting to focus on raising a family.

Here's a link to New Springfield, where some information and photos of Lyna can be found:

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