Shinnecock Hills, Peconic Bay 1902

William Merritt Chase made “Shinnecock Hills, Peconic Bay” with oil on canvas, sometime around the turn of the century. The palette here is really all about the greens, right? And that big sky blue on top. The mark making is fairly loose, suggestive rather than descriptive, so what we have is less a specific place than an evocation of a summer landscape, that feeling of warmth and light. Looking closer, you can see the textures Chase coaxes out of the paint: the thick impasto of the foliage in the foreground, contrasted with the thinner washes of color in the sky. The way he drags the brush across the canvas creates a sense of movement, like the wind rustling through the grass. There’s a figure in a pink dress, almost lost in the shrubbery, but that small dash of color is what makes the whole thing pop! There’s a similar freedom in the way Chase handles paint to someone like John Singer Sargent. It’s as if they were both saying, “Let the paint do the talking, let the process be visible, let the viewer fill in the blanks.” That’s the magic of painting, right?