American Art Collaborative

The oldest child of William Merritt Chase and Alice Gerson Chase, Alice Dieudonnée Chase (1887-1971) was a frequent model for her father. According to family tradition, Chase exclaimed, "Doesn't she look cozy?" one day when he saw the infant lying in the corner of a sofa. The nickname stuck within the family and "Cosy" became the subject of over a dozen portraits that trace her journey from infancy to adulthood. This example depicts her as a pensive twelve or thirteen year old. When asked the reason for his frequent use of his daughter as a subject, the artist claimed, "Why? I don't know. She very much resembles her mother." In other respects, Cosy resembled her father; trained by him as a painter, she exhibited still lifes and landscapes in New York in the 1940s.