Adelaide Cole Chase, American, (1869-1944) is known as a painter of decorative still lives and of portraits (especially women and children). She was born in 1868 to Belgium pianist Irma de Pelgrom and Boston painter Joseph Foxcroft Cole. The Cole's circle of friends included many artists.

Winslow Homer used Adelaide as a model several times when she was about ten. Her earliest art teacher was Frederic Paul Vinton. Vinton, Homer, and her father encouraged Chase to pursue career in art.

In 1892, after her marriage to Boston architect William C. Chase, Adelaide entered Museum School. She studied under American impressionist Frank Benson (1862-1951) at the Museum. She later studied with Edmund Tarbell (1862-1938) who was the greatest influence to her style of painting.

Adelaide discovered what other women of the 19th century had found, the lack of access to the rigorous training in anatomy courses, especially courses in drawing the live male nude. This was available to men in the professional art academies only, which made it almost impossible for women to achieve the same standard of quality in their art.

Chase, like other women, created her own resourceful alternatives to the academy. Itinerant painters of modest ability began to travel through small towns where they gave art lessons to women. Wealthy ladies, like Chase, attended newly opened "seminaries" where drawing and painting were added to the curriculum for a small fee as part of a 'genteel' lady's accomplishments.

These young women produced numerous paintings based on literary and biblical sources, they copied engravings, magazine articles, instruction books and decks of cards. Other women, whose male relatives were willing to teach them, were dependent on this uneven quality of instruction. Ellen C. Clayton stated in 1867, "there is no more vexed subject difficult of satisfactory solution; than this matter of drawing from life by ladies studying painting".

In 1890, Chase had ventured to Paris to enroll in the classes with Jean-Paul Laurens and Carlus Duran. It was here that she developed and studied to become a very sought after painter of portraits.

Events were as follows; Chase's first one-man exhibition was held at Doll and Richards in 1901. In 1904 she won a silver medal at the St. Louis Exposition. She was elected to the Associate National Academy in 1906. In 1915 she won a silver medal in the Pan-American Exposition in San Francisco. Chase exhibited in Boston at Doll and Richards, Rowlands Galleries, the Guild of Boston Artists and the Boston Club. In New York she exhibited at the Society of American Artists. She also exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy and the Chicago Art Institute. She died at the age of 75 in Gloucester, Mass. in 1944.

Museums:
Boston Museum of Fine Art, "Violinist"

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton