"A Little Deviltry": Gilded Age Celebrity and William Merritt Chase's Tenth Street Studio as Advertisement

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century, the American art world was highly competitive as artists vied with each other and more established European artists for a small pool of patrons. A few recognized the power of mass media to create celebrity and financial success. They tread carefully into the arena of self-promotion, striking a delicate balance between advertising and maintaining Gilded Age ideas about the purely artistic motivations of a great painter. In 1878, the largely unknown artist William Merritt Chase arrived in New York with the idea that an elaborately decorated studio could potentially make his name in the art world. The plan worked. His Tenth Street Studio was a harmony of color created through his masterful arrangement of bric-a-brac and art objects. It soon attracted media coverage and public attention. Chase quickly realized, however, that the writers who gushed over his studio were more interested in the space than the artist who created it. While the studio had achieved celebrity, its creator had not. In order to attract patrons, Chase needed to garner press coverage of the studio that would refer back to himself as the artist. His solution was a series of paintings of the studio interior itself. Chase depicted wealthy visitors looking at prints, conferring with the artist, even contemplating a purchase of work right off the walls – messages intended to advertise his availability to these potential patrons. These painted “advertisements,” created in the 1880s, redirected public attention from the studio to its creator and solidified his celebrity. In 1890, Chase painted one of the most famous events to ever occur at the Tenth Street Studio – the performance of the Spanish dancer known as the Carmencita. While encapsulating the bohemian atmosphere of the studio, Chase’s portrait of the dancer displayed no trace of the studio or its contents, only a plain muted background. He no longer needed to advertise himself as artist-for-hire because he had already succeeded in this endeavor. His painted studio advertisements had worked. Chase was a bona fide Gilded Age celebrity and a permanent addition to the canon of great American artists.