Woodstock-based painter Frank Swift Chase summers in 1920 on Nantucket Island, where he establishes his first art school; he will be the leading teacher of painting here for three decades.

Dubbed "the dean of Nantucket artists" by the Artists Association of Nantucket, he is largely responsible for the development of this community as a true art colony.

Born in St Louis, Missouri, on March 12, 1886, the fourth child of Grace (née Metcalfe) and Charles Denison Chase, he attended public elementary school and high school in St Louis.

Despite a mathematical mind, he had not progressed to college, instead working as an assistant in his father's laboratory at the Aluminum Company of America in Bauxite, Arkansas.

His father, an Alcoa chemist, is noted among the pioneers of experimentation with the use of nitroglycerin in mining.