Study of Flesh Color and Gold

William Merritt Chase

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the hips up, a mostly nude woman with pale skin and dark hair pulled up into a loose bun sits with her back to us in this vertical pastel. Touches of sunshine yellow, scarlet red, and black suggest a pattern on the spring green cloth loosely encircling her hips along the bottom edge of the paper. She seems to hold her hands in front of her body so her elbows are bent and she looks down, perhaps at something in her lap. Her black hair is flecked with white to suggest glinting light. The background is filled with a golden yellow field interspersed with hazy turquoise, tomato red, sky blue, and black shapes. It is loosely rendered with pastel to create a blurry effect. Eventually it becomes evident that it is a Japanese screen with clusters of people, landscape, and perhaps a courtyard. The artist signed the work with red letters near the woman’s right hip: “Wm M Chase.”