Shinnecock Landscape 

Here we see a landscape painted by William Merritt Chase, who worked in Shinnecock, Long Island at the turn of the century. Chase was an important figure in the American art world, helping to shape art education and taste during the Gilded Age. This painting invites us to consider how artists like Chase contributed to the construction of an American identity through landscape painting. At the time, Shinnecock was home to one of the oldest Native American tribes in the US, whose ancestral lands were being encroached upon by wealthy New Yorkers building summer homes. In this context, Chase’s decision to paint this landscape, and indeed his very presence in Shinnecock, reflects a complicated relationship to questions of land, ownership, and cultural identity. The solitary figure in the background, almost swallowed by the landscape, evokes both a sense of freedom and a feeling of alienation. Chase invites us to consider our own place within the landscape, and the complex histories that shape our understanding of place and belonging.