The first in a beautiful four-volume complete catalogue of all known works by the beloved American artist William Merritt Chase A perennial favorite of museum visitors, the works of William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) embody the quintessential characteristics of American Impressionism: outdoor landscapes, a colorful palette, and an energetic brushstroke. He was also a portrait painter of the first rank, a master of still life, a renowned teacher, and a leader of artists' societies. This gorgeous book, the first of a four-volume definitive catalogue, features Chase's stunning paintings in pastel, which constitute a major and previously understudied body of work by the artist; monotypes; painted tiles and plates; watercolors; and prints. Reconstructing Chase's oeuvre is a daunting task, as the artist left few records of any kind, and no documentation of his individual works exists. Furthermore, Chase's paintings and pastels have been forged in great numbers throughout the years, and many of these works still surface on the art market. Making this long-awaited volume even more valuable is a list of every known exhibition of Chase's work during the artist's lifetime, selected examples of major post-1917 exhibitions, and an essay on Chase's innovative pastel technique.

Six plein-air painters in Oakland, California, joined together in 1917 to form an association that lasted nearly fifteen years. The Society of Six—Selden Connor Gile, Maurice Logan, William H. Clapp, August F. Gay, Bernard von Eichman, and Louis Siegriest—created a color-centered modernist idiom that shocked establishment tastes but remains the most advanced painting of its era in Northern California. Nancy Boas's well-informed and sumptuously illustrated chronicle recognizes the importance of these six painters in the history of American Post-Impressionism. The Six found themselves in the position of an avant garde not because they set out to reject conventionality, but because they aspired to create their own indigenous modernism. While the artists were considered outsiders in their time, their work is now recognized as part of the vital and enduring lineage of American art. Depression hardship ended the Six's ascendancy, but their painterliness, use of color, and deep alliance with the land and the light became a beacon for postwar Northern California modern painters such as Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. Combining biography and critical analysis, Nancy Boas offers a fitting tribute to the lives and exhilarating painting of the Society of Six.

"Should be the classic, central, definitive work on the emergence of Bay Area Figurative painting."--Paul Mills, author of The New Figurative Painting of David Park