At the Seaside
ca. 1892
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
20 × 34 in. (50.8 × 86.4 cm)
Classification
Painting
Culture
American
Department
The American Wing
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967
Accession Number
67.187.123
Tags
About this artwork
This sun-drenched coastal scene depicts women and children relaxing on the beach at Shinnecock Bay, Long Island, seeking shade beneath colorful parasols. The composition is dominated by a broad expanse of sky that fills the upper half of the canvas, creating a sense of openness and leisure. Chase captures the shimmering light and atmospheric effects of a summer day with loose, confident brushwork, rendering figures as part of the larger landscape rather than as focal points. William Merritt Chas...
Art Historical Context
William Merritt Chase's *At the Seaside* (ca. 1892) captures a sun-drenched afternoon on the beach at Shinnecock Bay, Long Island, where women and children relax under colorful parasols. This oil on canvas, measuring 20 × 34 inches, fills the upper half with a vast sky, evoking boundless leisure and openness. Painted shortly after Chase moved his family to their Shinnecock Hall summer home, it reflects his embrace of plein-air painting during a prolific period leading the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art (1891–1902). Chase's loose, confident brushwork and broken color technique—hallmarks...
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