American Impressionist painter William Merritt Chase (1848-1916), founder of the Chase School (later, Parsons The New School for Design), was a member of the New York Etching Club, which formed in 1877 and marked a period of avid engagement with the medium on the part of American artists. Chase, however, did not prefer the medium, and only did about ten etchings, several of which were completed on commission after the artists J.F. Millet and Constantine Troyon.

Chase etched "Keying Up--the Court Jester" (1879) after his own painting of the same title, which was made in 1875 when he was a student at the Munich Royal Academy. The etching, a reverse image of the painting, was widely distributed in a bid to capitalize upon the attention drawn to Chase after his painting earned a medal of honor at the 1896 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The painting is in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

"Spanish Peasant" (circa 1881) is one of three etchings Chase exhibited with the New York Etching Club.

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Source: Pisano, Ronald G., D. Frederick. Baker, and Marjorie Shelley. William Merritt Chase: the Paintings in Pastel, Monotypes, Painted Tiles and Ceramic Plates, Watercolors and Prints. Vol. I. New Haven: Yale UP, 2006. Print. The Complete Catalogue of Known and Documented Work by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916).