Woman in White

Woman in White by William Merritt Chase from 1902 belongs to his extended series of figure paintings depicting women in white or light-colored dress — subjects that gave him maximum opportunity to demonstrate his virtuosic handling of light on fabric. Chase had absorbed Whistler's lessons about tonal harmony and the expressive possibilities of a restricted palette, and his women in white represent a sustained application of those lessons within an American Impressionist context. The painting is held in Indianapolis, one of a number of American museum collections that preserve examples of Chase's figure work outside the major East Coast institutions.

Chase renders the white dress with the bravura brushwork for which he was celebrated — broad, rapid strokes that establish the dress's volume and luminosity without descriptive overworking. His handling of white on white, distinguishing the figure from its background through subtle tonal variations, demonstrates the technical sophistication he brought to this apparently simple chromatic challenge.