William Merritt Chase: The Paintings in Pastel, Monotypes, Painted Tiles and Ceramic Plates, Watercolors, and Prints
By Ronald G. Pisano; 2006; 146 pp.; Hardcover, $50; Yale University Press

William Merritt Chase: Portraits in Oil
By Ronald G. Pisano; 2007; 312 pp.; Hardcover, $75; Yale University Press

William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) kept no lists of his paintings, no logbook of portrait sitters, no exhibition or sales records or clippings scrapbooks. His oeuvre was in fact so poorly documented that fakes started appearing soon after his death, and remain prevalent on the market. Ronald G. Pisano, a Long Island-based curator and art historian, spent 30 years separating Chase facts from fiction, gathering enough scholarship before his death from cancer in 2000 to fill a multi-part catalogue raisonné. These two volumes are the first of four. (D. Frederick Baker, Pisano’s life partner, is supervising completion of the others.) The books so far cover some 800 “known and documented” pieces, noting what landscape or person they depict; where they have been published, exhibited, and sold; and how they relate to other Chase works. Pisano’s achievement is especially impressive considering he never saw dozens of the works he discusses, because they have been lost; half of the 106 pastels noted in the first book, for instance, are listed as “location unknown.”