Edward Leigh Chase

Edward Leigh Chase
Born	1884 Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin
Died	1965 (aged 80/81)
Education	Art Students League
Known for	Drawing, Illustration, Painting

Edward Leigh Chase (1884–1965) was an American painter and illustrator, and an early member of the Byrdcliffe experiment which gave rise to the artists' colony at . A gifted sketch artist and watercolorist, he was one of the group of young Art Students League humorists who called themselves the Fakirs.

Edward Leigh Chase was born in Elkhart Lake, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, the third child of Grace (née Metcalfe) and chemist Charles Denison Chase. His family moved to St Louis, Missouri, in 1885, when he was an infant, and he grew up attending public schools there. Shunning regular college, he traveled to New York City to study art at the Art Students League. Among his professors there was the painter William Merritt Chase.

Edward Leigh Chase – “Ned” to those who knew him – showed particular promise in his use of pen and ink, and he soon turned his talent and wit to humor. For fun and valuable practice, a group of irreverent pupils at the League in Manhattan created parody illustrations mocking serious works of leading artists, among them their own professors, William Merritt Chase included. The students who participated in such lampooning called themselves the Society of American Fakirs, word play on the fact that the faux masterpieces they produced were fakes. The name implied as well that they fancied themselves magicians of a sort. With a wave of a pen or paintbrush, they could transform "legitimate" art into laughing stock. Among the Fakirs were Georgia O'Keeffe, James Montgomery Flagg, Man Ray, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Ned Chase’s younger brother, Frank Swift Chase.

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