The Inner Studio, Tenth Street

In 1878, after returning to the United States from artistic study in Europe, William Merritt Chase rented a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. Designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt and opened in 1858, the building would become home to such well-known American artists as Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and Lockwood de Forest. Chase decorated his studio with collections of art and exotic bric-a-brac that served as subject matter and created a luxurious environment for entertaining patrons and potential clients. Although he included art and artifacts from a range of places, Asian and Middle Eastern objects figured prominently. The loose brushwork of the painting suggests the style of Impressionism, which came to characterize Chase's later work.