Joseph Cummings Chase

His 1918 Portrait of General MacArthur

Rob Wagner's Script Magazine, 1942

Joseph Cummings Chase (1878 - 1965) was an American painter who's name is not likely to be associated with World War I artists but, like Sir William Orpen, he had a comfortable spot within fashionable circles and he was commissioned to paint portraits of the anointed within his nations military establishment (142 in all). This article appeared in 1942 and primarily concerns the W.W. I portrait that Chase painted of Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur during the closing days of the war and the circumstances under which the drawing was created. The artist himself describes this matter and opines freely as to the general that MacArthur was in 1918 and the lion he was twenty years later.