Castle Point, Hoboken by William Merritt Chase depicts the grounds of the Stevens family estate in Hoboken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Colonel John Stevens, the inventor and entrepreneur for whom the town’s Stevens Institute of Technology is named, purchased the land in 1794 for approximately $90,000 and developed it as a resort. After his death the family kept control of the property, selling off portions over time while reserving its highest ground, Castle Point, for their own use.

Chase executed the present painting during his family’s brief residency in Hoboken around 1891, between their years in New York City and their move to Shinnecock, Long Island. Chase, his wife Alice Gerson Chase, and their children lived at 505 Garden Street, within walking distance of the Stevens estate. The painting belongs to a significant group of Chase’s works depicting parks and gardens near his successive homes, ranging from Gravesend Bay in Brooklyn to Shinnecock Hills. The best known are his views of Prospect Park and Central Park, painted between 1886 and 1890, in which he applied the emphasis on light, color, and immediacy of European Impressionism to American subjects. These pictures became closely identified with Chase, who, as a critic for The Sun observed in 1891, treated such subjects “so charmingly and so characteristically” that other painters risked being accused of attempting “to ‘do a Chase.’” [1]

[1] “Some Questions of Art. Pictures by Mr. William M. Chase,” Sun, March 1, 1891, p. 14.