Illustrated as L.52 in Ronald G. Pisano’s catalogue raisonné, William Merritt Chase: Landscapes in Oil, this oil on wood panel depicts a tranquil, tree-lined shoreline reflected across still water. Painted circa 1886, the work belongs to an important group of intimate plein-air studies executed during Chase’s celebrated New York period, when he worked directly from nature in Brooklyn’s parks and waterways.

Pisano identifies the painting as Poplar Lake [Lakeside Park], one of a series of landscapes Chase produced while exploring the lakes and wooded vistas of Brooklyn during the mid-1880s. Executed with confident, painterly brushwork and a keen sensitivity to changing light and atmosphere, these small panels embody the immediacy that distinguishes Chase’s finest Impressionist landscapes.

Research accompanying the present work further suggests the scene likely depicts the area now known as Lakeside within Prospect Park, Brooklyn, consistent with Chase’s documented series of Prospect Park paintings from the same period. Exhibited by the artist at the Brooklyn Art Club in 1886 and included the following year in the historic Chase Sale, the painting represents a well-documented example from one of the artist’s most productive years.

Literature: Ronald G. Pisano, completed by Carolyn K. Lane with a chronology by D. Frederick Baker, The Complete Catalogue of Known and Documented Works by William Merritt Chase, 1849–1916, Vol. III: William Merritt Chase: Landscapes in Oil. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009. Illustrated as L.52, Poplar Lake [Lakeside Park], p. 29.

Exhibited: Brooklyn Art Club, Brooklyn, New York, 1886, No. 100 (lent by the artist).

Dimensions: 10.5 x 14 in.; framed 16 x 19.5 in.

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Examination under ultraviolet light reveals scattered areas of fluorescence in the upper sky. It is unclear whether these represent minor inpainting or the natural character of the wood panel. The painting presents well overall.