Chase, New York, American League, from the White Border series (T206) for the American Tobacco Company 1909 - 1911

This small, intimate painting of Chase of the New York American League was made by the American Tobacco Company. Just think about that for a second - a tobacco company employs painters! I imagine someone sitting in a room making these little artworks, maybe using a kind of assembly line process. The hand-painted qualities of the image makes me think about the tradition of portraiture and the desire to capture likeness. I wonder about the relationship between photography and painting at the time, and how the painter may have been working from a photograph. I'm curious to know about the source imagery. The white border around the central image creates a frame within a frame, like a window. The muted tones and soft brushwork give the painting a dreamy, nostalgic quality. The colours are simple - a blue sky, a green field, and the figure of Chase in his baseball uniform. It's a snapshot of a moment in time, preserved in paint. It reminds me a little bit of Fairfield Porter's paintings of everyday life.