  About the Artwork
  
  
  Chase was deeply influenced by the Spanish painter Velázquez. He named a daughter Helen Velázquez and painted her as an lnfanta in homage to Velázquez’s portraits for the Spanish court. Here the Spanish influence is obvious in the way Chase handles the values of reflected light and the strong emphasis on the immediate foreground. The brushwork in the sleeves, collar, and bodice of the dress are clean, crisp, and assertive, serving as a foil to the luminous tones of the woman’s face and arms. Chase seems to capture, through her facial expression and standing pose, the determined attitudes of a commanding figure.
  
  
  Title
  Portrait of a Lady in Black
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1895
  
  Artist
  William Merritt Chase
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1849-1916
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 72 × 35 inches (182.9 × 88.9 cm)
  Framed: 83 1/8 × 47 × 3 7/8 inches (211.1 × 119.4 × 9.8 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Gift of Henry Munroe Campbell
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  43.486
  
  
  Copyright
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