Through his efforts, there were exhibits in New York of “The Eight,” 1908, the “Exhibition of Independent Artists,” 1910, at the Union League, 1911, and at the MacDowell Club of New York the same year.
  
The legacies of William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri have endured over the decades through the efforts of their pupils, many of whom became teachers themselves. Henri, for example, returned to the faculty of The Art Students League in 1915 (a year before Chase died), where he gave lectures and taught portraiture and composition until 1927, just prior to his death.

At least 28 of Henri’s League students turned to teaching there—Peggy Bacon, Hilda Belcher, George Bellows, Walter Biggs, Arnold Blanch, Robert Brackman, Stuart Davis, Guy Pène du Bois, Peppino Mangravite, Paul Manship, Walter Pach, Waldo Pierce, Dimitri Romanovsky, Eugene Speicher and Sol Wilson.

As Henry Adams noted in his 1907 autobiography The Education of Henry Adams, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” This remains the sustaining legacy of these two teachers who taught thousands.

“Painterly Controversy: William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri” can be seen at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Conn., through April 29.

Art critic and artist Bennard Perlman is the author of Robert Henri: His Life and Art, The Golden Age of American Illustration: F. R. Gruger and His Circle, The Immortal Eight: American Painting from Eakins to the Armory Show and The Lives, Loves, and Art of Arthur B. Davies.