More on the artist: 

            William Merritt Chase, like most people in the 19th century, was fascinated with theatricality and how to use costuming as a way of displaying a particular identity or stereotype. He may have been playing around with this format and style as a young artist, but he modernizes the subject to the viewer through the visually depicted dependence on alcohol, a much-discussed topic of this time in the States. The German realists that he adores at this time seep into his work, making his caricatures grounded in a dehumanizing reality. In the final image of the jester, “Keying Up”, William Merritt Chase no longer depicts the life of a jester outside of his space of performance. Instead, he paints a desperate fool’s search for alcohol. This series of jester paintings is quite unique in subject matter from his other work. During William Merritt Chase's time as a young artist, many of his portraits of young men included some element of inebriation. 

            This includes holding pitchers of alcohol and even smoking themselves.5 The jester is not a young boy; his wrinkles are accentuated. Chase clearly shows his age and the impact his habits have on his body. Chase’s portraits of women never display them with substances, but he does display them in costume. In these depictions of women, costuming plays a key role in showing a woman's prestige and power in their identity. Such as his depictions of “New Women”.6

            Historically, the Jester is depicted as a little person who is heavily inebriated and made to be a “fool”.7 Throughout Europe and the U.S., little people have been (and are) mistreated, enslaved, exoticized, and displayed for the amusement of others. This display, and showmanship, of little people in comparison to those who are not of shorter stature is the main tool to create a dehumanized other (in this case, little people) in comparison to a created normal (non-shorter-statured people). A common way to exaggerate a “lack” of perceived normalcy is to make the other do things that are viewed as uncivilized. Drinking, specifically in excess, was not viewed as civilized, specifically in the U.S. in the 1870’s.8

            The Jester's job is far more than just to perform for the king. The king is someone who must be above everyone else; they must be viewed as the picture of civility. European Royalty is not just human but a leader of human civility. As many of whom had suffered effects from inbreeding, giving them disabilities themselves, there was a need to create a performance of “perfection” or able-bodiedness. 

            A great way to heighten one person's visual performance of civility, power, and physical ability is to display the visual performance of another's incivility, perceived non-normativity, and depicted subhumanity. That is the job of the Jester or the “fool”. By the time Chase got to the scene, this job had been painted for centuries throughout European history. What surprises me is that, from what I have found, this was painted before his trip to Venice.9 Meaning he may not have seen Feast at the House of Levi, or other paintings of jesters, one may see during European travels, before painting these. There were many masterworks for him to study from in Munich. He was taught to study them extensively. 10,11

            William Merritt Chase was a known lover of Velázquez. Velázquez, who did in fact paint numerous actual portraits of little people. One of which, “The court jester Don Antonio with a dog” (1650), similarly pictured a jester of the court. In the portrait, he is named, he is pictured as civil, orderly, and respectable with a dog beside him.12 It is not known if William Merritt Chase saw these paintings, but if he did, there is little resemblance in subject matter. 

            “Keying up” is not a portrait of a sitter, like much of Chase's work is. The sitter himself is unknown, his story rewritten. I suspect he would have lived in Munich in 1875. The only known story of the sitter we have is one shared by Katharine Roof: 

“He used to tell a tale of the model for this study, who was fond of imbibing anything of an alcoholic nature that happened to be available. One day, while the painter was out of the room, the model consumed a considerable quantity of hair-tonic which Chase had put in a whiskey bottle, with the result that the next day the jester was not present at the studio.”

No further elaboration was made, the model is even referenced to as “the jester”.13 No name, as he too is in turn caricaturized into the stereotype of the “Drunken Jester”. Velázquez’s paintings of little people have the sitters named. Velázquez, like Chase, was known for depicting his master work style to portray modern narratives and understandings of the current times.

            Erica Hirshler quotes Chase talking about his love and admiration for Velázquez in her studies of his depiction of the New Women.

“I saw in a new light the sublime example of Velásquez. What was so important for me was that Velasquez, with all his acquirement from the masters before him, felt the need of choosing new forms and arrangements, new schemes of color and methods of painting to fit the time and place he was called on to depict”

Chase’s painting, being a costume scene and not a portrait, is what dehumanizes the subject further. A caricature, painted in a full-length portrait style, in a room full of portraits and paintings of the modern new woman.14 This created a narrative that the subversion of truth is the reality. William Merritt Chase’s tale of the sitter further dehumanizes the subject, no matter whether the story is true or not. His lack of acknowledgment of the person who sits before him is dehumanizing. 15

            Chase is painting a Renaissance narrative but he brings in modern conceptions of alcohol. In the final, he makes the narrative focus on the subject’s dependence on alcohol, rendered in a way that is truly pertinent to his modern society. He does not necessarily depict inebriation in the framework of Renaissance views of alcohol use.16 This makes the subject relatable to the viewer because it is a modern and controversial topic. It was also an image widely publicized throughout the U.S. Not only was the painting shown and prized, but this was “one of only a handful of etchings” by William Merritt Chase.17,18 He clearly was not an expert at the etching process, as the prints were inverted. He still made the effort to mass-produce this image and make it accessible to a wider audience. This was also a great way for him to show off back home to America that his studies abroad in Munich paid off. They were so popular that another artist later re-etched them so they would match the orientation of the painting.19

            Depictions of little people depicted as drunken fools are not new, and they are still manufactured, and their dehumanizing narratives still spread. Little people should not be pictured this way. Their lives, their artistry, their personhood should be. William Merritt Chase created an image that perpetuates narratives that dehumanize little people and people with addictions. His work gives us a clear narrative of how little people, people with disabilities, and people with addictions were viewed in and around the 1870’s.