The New York School of Art
The school Chase built with students who seceded from the Art Students League, where he painted market fish before the class, until Robert Henri's art for life's sake pulled the room away.
William Merritt Chase would buy fish fresh from the market, paint them at speed in front of the class before they spoiled, and carry them back, the room gasping as the picture came alive. He founded the Chase School of Art in 1896 with students who had walked out of the Art Students League, wanting a more experimental, explicitly American school; it was renamed the New York School of Art in 1898. Admission was open-door, beginners beside veterans, and the teaching turned on a clash. Chase preached art for art's sake, technical mastery and bravura brushwork; Robert Henri, whom he hired in 1902, preached art for life's sake, telling students to "forget about art and paint pictures of what interests you in life." Henri's classes drew the school away from its founder, and Chase resigned in 1907. The painters it formed, Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, George Bellows, carried Henri's realism into the Ashcan School.
How the system worked
Open-door, with relaxed standards and no strict prerequisites, a policy built partly to keep enrolment and tuition flowing. Beginners worked alongside experienced students, and courses ran year-round on open enrolment. Whether there was any formal progression, casts before life painting, is not documented.
Founded in makeshift rooms near the Ladies' Mile on 23rd Street in 1896, then moved in 1897 into the American Fine Arts Society building at 215 West 57th Street, the same building that housed the Art Students League the students had just left. Classes covered drawing, painting from life, composition, still life, portraiture, and illustration, in life rooms segregated by sex.
Loosely structured. Advancement rested on instructor critiques rather than examinations, and the school's real division was philosophical, not by grade: Chase's craft-first training on one side, Henri's life-first realism on the other, with students drifting toward the teacher who moved them.
Critique was the whole of it. There is no evidence of formal examinations, prizes, or competitions beyond the instructors' criticism. Chase's critiques were periodic and rigorous, often delivered to the group as a lecture built on one student's work; Henri's were long and intimate, one-on-one sessions that could run three or four hours.
Classes ran across the day with evening sessions for working students, but the exact daily and weekly timetable for the 1896-1909 school does not survive in the record. The West 57th Street studios were worked by daylight through large windows and skylights, and by gaslight in the evenings.
Two opposed models under one roof. Chase corrected through theatrical demonstration and group critique; Henri sat with a student for hours and, as Stuart Davis recalled, judged a painting "not from the standpoint of some pre-established norm of excellence, but in relation to his own ideas." Faction feeling ran so high that student clashes between the two camps sometimes came to blows and police were called.
The open-admission model was designed to keep tuition-paying students coming, but the actual fees for 1896-1909 are undocumented; no complete prospectus survives. For scale only, the Art Students League charged five dollars a month in 1875, and annual university tuition ran to about $150 in the 1910s.
The curriculum, in training order
Chase painted a still life or portrait to completion in a single morning session in front of the class, working wet-on-wet with loaded brushes and blending the colour directly on the canvas: the finished picture as the lesson.
Chase's signature demonstration. He bought fresh fish at the market in the morning, painted them at speed before the class, and returned them before they spoiled; audiences reportedly gasped as the picture came alive.
Henri's method for starting a portrait, set down in The Art Spirit: block in seven major masses first, the light of the face, its shade, the hair, the collar and shirt, the tie, the coat, and the background, seizing the whole before any detail.
Henri had students work quickly and intuitively to catch the character of a subject rather than render it academically, on his charge to "paint pictures of what interests you in life."
Materials, models, and the room
- Charcoal, graphite, and oil. Students drew in charcoal and graphite and painted in oil on canvas and academy board, the standard kit of the period. The New York Central Art Supply store, opened nearby in 1905, was a source. Specific required materials for the school are not documented.
- The West 57th Street studios. The American Fine Arts Society building gave the school large windows and skylights for daylight work, with gaslight for the evening classes, shared with the Art Students League down the hall.
- The models. Nude models in life classes segregated by sex were central to the curriculum. Professional models worked across New York (an 1887 account cites seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half an hour), but the pay and schedules of the school's own models are undocumented.
The people
Who taught
William Merritt Chase · founder and instructor, 1896-1907
Magnetic teacher of bravura, wet-on-wet painting who opened the school with the line "I recognize no sex in art" and hired former women students as its first instructors. Resigned in 1907 as Henri's movement overtook the school.
Robert Henri · instructor, 1902-1909
Hired by Chase, then his rival. Preached art for life's sake and a personal response to the modern city; his teaching, gathered in The Art Spirit, made him the most followed teacher in American art.
Kenneth Hayes Miller · instructor, 1899-1911
A Chase student who became a long-tenured teacher at the school, bridging the Chase and Henri camps; taught George Bellows and Edward Hopper.
Ami Mali Hicks, Alice M. Simpson, and Louise Lyons Heustis · first instructors, from 1896
Former Chase students hired as the school's first teaching staff, the substance behind his "I recognize no sex in art."
Who trained here
Edward Hopper · 1900-1906
Studied under both Chase and Henri, modelling his early work on Chase before Henri's realism took hold; he later said it took him ten years to get over Henri's influence.
Rockwell Kent · c. 1902-1904
Won a full scholarship from Chase after the Shinnecock summer school and studied under Chase, Henri, and Miller; his memoir It's Me, O Lord records Henri's impact on him.
George Bellows · 1904-c. 1906
Enrolled straight into Henri's class, became a devoted follower and a leader of the Ashcan School, and called Henri "properly my father."
Patrick Henry Bruce · 1902-1903
Studied with Chase, Henri, and Miller. In a 1905 letter he wrote, "I don't think I have had such good times again as I enjoyed at the New York School of Art," and granted that Henri's criticism of his work was correct.
The primary record
- Robert Henri, The Art Spirit (1923), compiled from his lectures and critiques by his student Margery Ryerson: "All education must be self-education," and "The object is not to make art, but to be in the wonderful state which makes art inevitable.". The single fullest record of the teaching that reshaped the school.
- Rockwell Kent, It's Me, O Lord (1955): a first-hand account of studying under Chase, Henri, and Miller.
- The Patrick Henry Bruce letters to Robert Henri (MoMA, Patrick Henry Bruce catalogue raisonné): a student's testimony to the school and to Henri's criticism.
- The annual circular for the 1898-1899 season and the Year Book of the Art Societies of New York, 1898-1899: institutional records mentioned in the research but not fully accessed, and the main gap in the primary record.. No complete prospectus from 1896-1909 has been fully recovered.
Open questions
- Tuition fees and detailed daily or weekly schedules for 1896-1909 are undocumented; no complete prospectus, catalog, or circular from the period has been fully recovered.
- Whether the curriculum had a formal progression (cast drawing before life painting) or was entirely a la carte is unverified.
- The "my life began at this point" testimony about Henri is attributed to both Rockwell Kent and George Bellows in secondary sources, so it is not presented here as either man's verbatim words.
- Chase's advice to "take the best from everything" and the claim that Hopper advertised himself as a pupil of Chase and Henri are unverified.
- The intermediate steps by which the school became the Parsons School of Design are not detailed in the record.
Common questions
What was the New York School of Art?
A progressive New York art school founded by William Merritt Chase in 1896 as the Chase School of Art and renamed in 1898. It ran until about 1909 on open admission and instructor critique, and is remembered above all for the rivalry between Chase's craft-first teaching and Robert Henri's life-first realism. It later became the Parsons School of Design.
Who founded the Chase School of Art?
The painter William Merritt Chase, in 1896, together with students who had seceded from the Art Students League because they found it too conservative. Chase wanted a more experimental, explicitly American school, and opened it declaring "I recognize no sex in art," hiring former women students as its first instructors.
What was the Chase-Henri clash?
A split over what painting is for. Chase taught art for art's sake, technical mastery and beautiful brushwork; Robert Henri, hired in 1902, taught art for life's sake, urging students to paint the raw realities of the modern city. Henri's classes grew more popular until Chase resigned in 1907, a public victory for the new movement.
How did William Merritt Chase teach painting?
By demonstration. Chase painted a portrait or still life to completion in a single session in front of the class, working wet-on-wet with loaded brushes. His most famous exercise was buying fresh fish at the market, painting them at speed, and returning them before they spoiled, the audience gasping as the picture came together.
Who studied at the New York School of Art?
Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, George Bellows, and Patrick Henry Bruce among many others. Several became leaders of the Ashcan School and American realism, carrying Henri's teaching, gathered after his death in The Art Spirit, into the next generation of American painting.
Did the New York School of Art become Parsons?
Yes. The school did not close in 1909 so much as pass on and change name, becoming over time the Parsons School of Design, now part of The New School in New York. Its Chase-and-Henri years remain its most influential period.
Part of the Academies atlas, how painting was actually taught, system by system. The living version of this question: atelier vs online course, and the painters themselves in the Painter Atlas.