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| A portrait of the Morgan stallion Senor Morgan, painted by Barbara L. Chase-Beekman of Duarte, California, owned by Merle Little of Monrovia, California. |
If you've spent much time watching Antiques Roadshow on public television in the US, you have probably seen the uncomfortable situation where a well-meaning person brings their family's treasure to the Roadshow for appraisal.
Let's say it's a painting. The Roadshow guest inherited it from her grandmother. Grandma got it from her own father. Great-Grandpa thought the painting was by a famous artist and worth a lot of money, and that story had been passed down the family line for generations.
But the appraiser tells the guest that -- even though it's a really nice painting -- sadly, their "priceless" work of art was not by the famous artist; in fact, it was by a lesser-known or even unknown artist. The subject matter is right, but the artist's style is wrong. And the artist's signature is different. The sadder-but-wiser guest goes home with their painting ("We still like it!") that is only worth several hundred, instead of many thousands, of dollars.
That brings me to the subject of 2oth century equine art. What do you do if you have a painting of a horse and you're not sure who painted it? The person you bought it from told you it was by a famous artist, and you trusted the seller to have done their homework. You could consult an art dealer or appraiser, but if they don't specialize in equine art, they may have to rely on the vortex that is the Internet Image Search to guess the artist's name.
I'd suggest that if your painting is of a horse -- ask a bunch of horsey people to weigh in. You can join a Facebook group like Vintage Horse Art, and ask the devout amateur horse enthusiasts there. (I'll put a link at the end of this post.) We were the horse-crazy kids who grew up in the 2oth century, and some of us knew the equine artists working then -- or we can refer you to someone who might know and not charge you to identify the artist's name.
It is a challenge! There were so many good horse artists during the 20th century, it can be difficult to keep track of which ones are which -- even when the artist signed their paintings.
And sometimes a well-known artist is given credit for the work of a lesser-known artist.
A good case in point is that of artist "chase," Barbara L. Chase-Beekman (1923-2002) of Duarte, California. She was well known regionally for her portraits of horses and dogs, but never seems to have been well-recognized outside California. The fact that she was a woman may have also biased some people against treating her seriously as an artist, even though many of the best horse artists of the 20th century were women.
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| Monrovia News-Post, 2/3/1969 |
During the 1960s, the Monrovia News-Post reported several times on Barbara's career. (The city of Monrovia is right next door to the city of Duarte.)
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| Monrovia News-Post, 6/11/1962 |
Her family members told me Barbara was self-taught. Typical of its era, the paper describes her as "also a housewife and mother." Over the years, Barbara's list of clients expanded to horses in Hollywood and on Southern California racetracks.
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| Monrovia News-Post, 11/14/1963. And yes, it's spelled "My Friend Flicka" with a "k." |
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| Monrovia News-Post, 2/12/1969. I'm not sure if the paper got the names of the artists in the correct order. The horse portrait on the right is one of Barbara L. Chase-Beekman's. |
Barbara L. Chase-Beekman signed her work "chase" in lower-case, script letters, as she did in the portraits of Senor Morgan above, and Lippitt Morman below.
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The tail on the end of the "e" of "chase" is extended to the right, and trails downward. Friends and members of her family have confirmed this for me, showing me photographs of her art they own.
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| A portrait of the Morgan stallion Lippitt Morman, painted by Barbara L. Chase-Beekman, owned by Merle Little of Monrovia, California. |
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| Barbara L. Chase-Beekman signed her paintings of horses with the simple word "chase" in lowercase script letters. The tail of the letter "e" at the end, trails off to the right and down. |
Barbara painted this exquisite portrait of a newborn foal for a friend. (Image used with permission.)
Again, we see the chase signature featuring lowercase script letters and the extended letter "e" at the end.
Now, knowing how she signed her work, we can go online and see that Barbara's work sometimes has been wrongly attributed to an internationally known (male) artist, Edward L. "Ned" Chase of New York (1884-1965).
Ned Chase was famous enough to have his own Wikipedia entry. (I'll put the link at the end of this post.) Born in Wisconsin, raised in Missouri, Ned moved to New York to study art. He adopted a bohemian lifestyle, spending time with the likes of Georgia O'Keefe and Man Ray.
Ned Chase is known for art in a variety of styles including fanciful illustrations, like these creatures in J. Walter McSpadden's 1909 book The Land of Nod.
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Later in his life, Ned created portraits of horses in a "classical" style, signing his lithographs "Edward L. Chase." The artist's signature is in script, with the "C" in "Chase" upper case.
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Ned may be best known to contemporary horse enthusiasts as the illustrator of the children's book The Big Book of Horses (Grossett & Dunlap, New York, 1951).
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Source: eBay |
Ned died in Woodstock, New York, in 1965. Biographies often mention that his grandson is actor/writer/comedian Chevy Chase.
I found several examples on the Internet of horse portraits signed simply "chase" by Barbara L. Chase-Beekman, identified as being by the internationally-known Ned Chase. An oil painting which sold in 2024 showed a Thoroughbred race horse on the track. The signature was "chase" alone, in lowercase script, no "Edward L." And yet it was sold as being by Ned Chase. I'm sure the sellers had no clue that Barbara was actually the artist.
I found another example online: a painting of two horses wearing halters with metal nameplates; their names were clearly spelled out on the canvas. Ned Chase died in 1965, but the Thoroughbreds in the painting were not foaled until 1972 and 1973! So he could not possibly have painted them. (A little online research into the horse names could have cleared that up easily.)
I hope this post can help clarify that there were indeed (at least) two artists named Chase who painted horses in the 20th century, and help the owners and resellers of Barbara L. Chase-Beekman's equine art correctly identify her work in the future!
That way, the answer to the question, "Which artists named Chase painted horses?" will include the name Barbara L. Chase-Beekman, who signed her art "chase."
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Sidebar: Why the mix-up between the two artists? I can think of several reasons:
-- Primarily, lack of information on the Internet about Barbara L. Chase-Beekman. Her name appears in Southern California newspapers, but you would have to know where to look to find it. (Fortunately, I've done enough California horse history research to make an educated guess as to where to find it.) If you just did an online search for "horse artists named Chase," at or near the top of the list would be Ned Chase, and since he was a painter, you might assume this famous guy painted your horse picture.
-- Sloppy research. The sellers of a painting might assume that "chase" meant Edward L. Chase without bothering to see whether the signatures matched or were even close. While I always caution people strongly against relying on machines to do all their thinking for them, I ran an online search with a photo of Barbara's signature, asking if it was Edward L. Chase's signature, and the search results gave me a conclusive "NO."
-- Greed and/or wishful thinking. If you saw Barbara's "chase" signature on your horse painting, you would probably want it to be, and even assume it was, by the famous Ned Chase, without thinking any further about it.
-- Gender bias in the post-World War II era. Women artists are often overlooked and undervalued (also underpaid!) in patriarchal society. In my research, I have noted that other equine artists like Hildred Goodwine and Angie Draper were often characterized as wives and mothers who also happened to paint, as opposed to painters who happened to be married with kids.
Newspapers and magazines often commented on their physical appearance, as was common in that era; Draper, for example, was described as a "pretty, brown-eyed, left-handed painter" in a Tampa newspaper article who was happy to earn a few extra dollars for her family through her "hobby" of painting. Hildred Goodwine, who signed her work "H. Goodwine," once went to accept an award for her painting at an art show and the judges looked around for a male artist -- they couldn't believe a woman had painted a horse so well.
But with time and additional exposure, Angie Draper's portraits of Thoroughbreds drew the attention of author Walter Farley, and she illustrated the reprints of his "Black Stallion" book series in 1961. Hildred Goodwine was widowed in the 1960s and supported herself and her children through taking painting commissions and networking with internationally-known cowboy artists. Her work appeared on the covers of nationally distributed horse magazines and, famously, dozens and dozens of her paintings were issued as greeting cards by Leanin' Tree.
Unfortunately, it seems Barbara L. Chase-Beekman did not get such a break that would have increased her national exposure.
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Here's Ned Chase's Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Leigh_Chase
Here's the link for the Facebook group Vintage Horse Art:
