At Tenth Street in New York City, Chase had moved into Albert Bierstadt's old studio and had decorated it as an extension of his own art. Chase filled the studio with lavish furniture, decorative objects, stuffed birds, oriental carpets, and exotic musical instruments. The studio served as a focal point for the sophisticated and fashionable members of the New York City art world of the late 19th century. By 1895 the cost of maintaining the studio, in addition to his other residences, forced Chase to close it and auction the contents.
In addition to his painting, Chase actively developed an interest in teaching. Chase adopted the plein air method of painting, and often taught his students in outdoor classes. He also opened the Chase School of Art in 1896, which became the New York School of Art two years later with Chase staying on as instructor until 1907. Chase was one of the most important teachers of American artists around the turn of the 20th century. In addition to his instruction of East Coast artists like Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, M. Jean McLane, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Edward Charles Volkert, he had an important role in influencing California art at the turn of the century, especially in interactions with Arthur Frank Mathews, Xavier Martinez and Percy Gray.
Portrait painting - Chase worked in all media. He was most fluent in oil painting and pastel, but also created watercolor paintings and etchings. He is perhaps best known for his portraits, his sitters including some of the most important men and women of his time in addition to his own family. Chase often painted his wife Alice and their children, sometimes in individual portraits, and other times in scenes of domestic tranquility: at breakfast in their backyard, or relaxing at their summer home on Long Island, the children playing on the floor or among the sand dunes of Shinnecock.
Landscapes - In addition to painting portraits and full-length figurative works, Chase began painting landscapes in earnest in the late 1880s. His interest in landscape art may have been sparked by the landmark New York exhibit of French impressionist works in 1886. Chase is best remembered for two series of landscape subjects, both painted in an impressionist manner. The first was his scenes of Prospect Park, Brooklyn and Central Park in New York [see below]; the second were his summer landscapes at Shinnecock [see below]. Chase usually featured people prominently in his landscapes. Often he depicted women and children in leisurely poses, relaxing on a park bench, on the beach, or lying in the summer grass at Shinnecock. The Shinnecock works in particular have come to be thought of by art historians as particularly fine examples of American Impressionism.
Still lifes - Chase continued to paint still lifes as he had done since his student days. Decorative objects filled his studios and homes, and his interior figurative scenes frequently included still life images. Perhaps Chase's most famous still life subject was dead fish, which he liked to paint against dark backgrounds, limp on a plate as though fresh from a fishmonger's stall.
Honors and late career - Chase won many honors at home and abroad, was a member of the National Academy of Design, New York, and from 1885 to 1895 was president of the Society of American Artists.
Chase's creativity declined in his later years, especially as modern art took hold in America, but he continued to paint and teach into the 1910s. One of his last teaching positions was at Carmel, California in the summer of 1914. Chase died on October 25, 1916 in his New York townhouse, an esteemed elder of the American art world. Today his works are in most major museums in the United States.
Idle Hours, ca. 1894; Oil on canvas; 39 x 48 5/8 in. (99.1 x 123.5 cm)Between 1891 and 1902 Chase found genteel outdoor subjects in Southampton, Long Island, where he directed the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art. In this scene, set on the scrubby dunes along Shinnecock Bay, he shows four of his frequent models: a woman in a red bonnet (probably his wife), two of his daughters, and, possibly, one of Mrs. Chase's sisters. Chase invites the viewer to fill in the picture's sketchy forms and elusive story. Idle Hours, which is typical of the pictures of urbanites enjoying suburban retreats that displaced images of country folk at play, hints at the growth of leisure time in response to urbanization and industrialization, women's predominance at summer resorts while their husbands worked in the city, and unaccompanied women's preference for safe seaside pastimes. The narrative may also be as simple as Henry James's observation: "Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."
The Lake for Miniature Yachts, ca. 1888; Oil on canvas; 16 x 24 in. (40.6 x 61 cm)The American Impressionists captured the energy and fragmentation of contemporary experience in Paris, Boston, New York, and other cities, often focusing on public parks, which allowed them to portray urban life without confronting urban hardship. Although he usually stressed pastoral charm in his park paintings, Chase allowed the pavement to dominate this view of the Conservatory Water, a small pond just inside the Fifth Avenue boundary of New York's Central Park, at Seventy-third Street. He shows Fifth Avenue's rooftops invading the insulating screen of trees that surrounds the park, thus signaling growing challenges to the park's rural fiction. A boy in a fashionable sailor suit striding along at left and an older boy and a well-dressed younger girl at the pond's edge appear as if glimpsed in an instant, quietly pursuing their own interests without any concern for the viewer or for enacting an apparent narrative.
Idle Hours, ca. 1894; Oil on canvas; 39 x 48 5/8 in. (99.1 x 123.5 cm)Between 1891 and 1902 Chase found genteel outdoor subjects in Southampton, Long Island, where he directed the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art. In this scene, set on the scrubby dunes along Shinnecock Bay, he shows four of his frequent models: a woman in a red bonnet (probably his wife), two of his daughters, and, possibly, one of Mrs. Chase's sisters. Chase invites the viewer to fill in the picture's sketchy forms and elusive story. Idle Hours, which is typical of the pictures of urbanites enjoying suburban retreats that displaced images of country folk at play, hints at the growth of leisure time in response to urbanization and industrialization, women's predominance at summer resorts while their husbands worked in the city, and unaccompanied women's preference for safe seaside pastimes. The narrative may also be as simple as Henry James's observation: "Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." 
The Lake for Miniature Yachts, ca. 1888; Oil on canvas; 16 x 24 in. (40.6 x 61 cm)The American Impressionists captured the energy and fragmentation of contemporary experience in Paris, Boston, New York, and other cities, often focusing on public parks, which allowed them to portray urban life without confronting urban hardship. Although he usually stressed pastoral charm in his park paintings, Chase allowed the pavement to dominate this view of the Conservatory Water, a small pond just inside the Fifth Avenue boundary of New York's Central Park, at Seventy-third Street. He shows Fifth Avenue's rooftops invading the insulating screen of trees that surrounds the park, thus signaling growing challenges to the park's rural fiction. A boy in a fashionable sailor suit striding along at left and an older boy and a well-dressed younger girl at the pond's edge appear as if glimpsed in an instant, quietly pursuing their own interests without any concern for the viewer or for enacting an apparent narrative. An English Cod, 1904, oil on canvas
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