Marion M. Chase (1874-1957)

Like many Boston artists, Marion Monks Chase received a traditional education in the fine arts from the Boston Museum of Fine Art School and also from private instructors in Paris.  She studied under George Noyes, Henry Hunt Clark and André Lhote, but soon diverted from these instructors’ methods and styles for a more modern approach to watercolor.  During the 1920s, she exhibited with the “Boston Five,” a group of similarly trained artists who were brought together by their common support for modernist ideas.   In a group including Charles Hopkinson, Charles Hovey Pepper, Harley Perkins and Carl Cutler, Chase was the only female member and was considered the most modern and primitive, working with bold compositions and colors.  Charles Hovey Pepper responded to Chase’s 1923 exhibition at the Kilgore Gallery in New York, describing her works as “unweaseled…paintings which say ‘Here I stand, Take it or leave it.’ ” [1]

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Chase actively pursued exhibition opportunities in both Boston and New York and had a strong public presence in both of these cities.  In 1916, she held her first solo show at Doll and Richards Gallery and continued to exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Copley Society, the Corcoran Gallery, the Boston Art Club, and Vose Galleries in one-woman shows and in group exhibitions with other members of the “Five.” Her hands later became riddled with arthritis as she approached her sixties and hindered her work during brief periods.  She eventually relocated to Carmel, California, where she continued to paint landscapes and still lifes until her death in 1957.   

References: Who Was Who in American Art; Boston Art Club; Erica Hirschler’s A Studio of Her Own; “New Sociery Water-Colorists” by W. H. Downes, Boston Evening Transcript, Nov. 8, 1924; Art Digest Dec. 1, 1934.