(Portrait of a Nurse)

Charles Shepard Chapman

This small oil on a panel by Chapman is signed in the lower-left corner "Charles S. Chapman / A.N.A.". This tonalist oil painting depicts an ethereal young woman in a white gown with a red cape and a simple hat, perhaps in a WWI nurse's uniform, standing in a garden.

The "A.N.A" stood for "Associate of the National Academy" a designation an artist would use until elected into the National Academy of Design, into which Chapman was inducted in 1926, after which he could us the designation "N.A." (National Academy).

Born in 1879, C.S. Chapman studied painting with William Merritt Chase and admired Frederick Remington's work. Chapman developed a method of painting that he called 'Water Oils', floating oil paint onto water over a sheet of paper then laying paper over the floating design which would abstract the image, like marbling. This was then transferred to the matrix, in this case, a panel.

Chapman taught at the Art Students League in New York and worked in Northern California in 1923 where this work was possibly acquired. He became a noted muralist in the Southwest, teaching at the University of Wyoming. Chapman died in 1962. This painting was acquired from the estate of an artist from San Francisco.