Portrait of a Boy (Ned Anshutz) with a Train

In his first one-man exhibition, a landmark show in Boston in 1886, Chase exhibited 130 works including twenty-five pastels. Lady in Black is believed to be #115 Study in Black against Yellow, in the Boston show, by leading Chase scholars Barbara Gallati and Diane Pilgrim. This is one of the earliest portraits of the young Alice Gerson Chase that the artist executed, probably in 1886, the year before their marriage in February 1887. Here Chase uses a striking dark black for the half-length figure set against a vigorously drawn yellow background, with flashes of red, all of which recalls his own pastel self-portrait Portrait (Portrait of the Artist), ca. 1883. Alice Gerson was Chase's favorite model and is here presented in the latest fashion, soon to be his young bride. She wears a tight fitted black dress with a flash of light from the stones of her brooch worn on her collar that is juxtaposed with a bright red fan held in her hands at right. A striking black hat jauntily placed on her head has a veil that covers the upper portion of her face, a bright red cap and a black and red feather piece that rises high above her head. Despite the cover of the black netting, her features are captured with great animation.

This dazzling portrait of his fiancé was gifted a year later to Minnie Gerson, Alice's elder sister, and remained in the Chase family well into the twentieth century. It is an excellent example of the artist's command of the pastel medium, and one of the finest and most personal portrayals of his favorite subject.