Shinnecock Hills

This pastel is one of the many works that William Merritt Chase made between 1891 and 1902, while he was running the Shinnecock Summer School of Art, the first school in the United States devoted to plein air practice. It depicts a broad expanse of the terrain of eastern Long Island—sandy dunes covered in grasses and bayberry bushes. Chase applied the pastel in soft, feathery strokes of pure color, some of which he smudged and blended, in order to capture the fleeting impressions of light and atmosphere on a sunny day.

One of the most celebrated painters of his generation, Chase also gained recognition as a master of pastel, a medium that enjoyed renewed appreciation among artists and audiences in late nineteenth-century America.