Art & Creativity Quote by William Merritt Chase

Chase’s line is a quiet declaration of artistic ethics disguised as practical advice. He’s not just rejecting “pencil sketches” or the comfort of the studio; he’s taking a side in a late-19th-century argument about what counts as truth in painting. To be “right under the sky” is to submit to the weather, the shifting light, the interruptions of real time. That demand turns landscape from a composed souvenir into a lived encounter.

The intent is pointed: he’s pushing back against a method that treats nature as raw material to be refined later, indoors, where memory and taste can sand down the messy parts. Studio landscapes often smuggle in a kind of narrative control: the artist becomes author-god, rearranging a scene until it matches an idea of “the picturesque.” Chase is insisting on a different authority, one where the sky - fickle, unsentimental, impossible to hold still - gets a vote. The subtext is humility, but also confidence: only a painter with chops can risk committing to a fleeting effect without the safety net of revision.

Context matters. Chase straddled academic training and the modernizing currents of Impressionism; he taught generations of Americans who were trying to shake off old-world formulas and paint their own world as it looked and felt. “Under the sky” isn’t just a location. It’s a stance: art as attention, not invention; immediacy over idealization; a willingness to let reality complicate style.