Armory Show has the animals moving with the fluid forms of Matisse figures, but the setting, with its detailed foliage, seems right out of the Middle Ages tapestries Chanler studied at the Musée de Cluny in Paris. Klimt-like gold gave his depictions of peacocks a contemporary feel, while the subject was directly influenced by the proud, wrathful birds in James McNeill Whistler’s 19th-century “Peacock Room.”

And then there are his Japanese lacquer-inspired screens, which often have a hint of malevolence in their seemingly serene subjects. For example, a 1914 screen, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has a prickle of porcupines on one side, and a “Nightmare” on the other, where bats, skeletons, a clown, crocodiles, an octopus, and floating souls are consumed in crawling layers of inkypaint.

Scholar Laurette E. McCarthy points out in her essay that Chanler’s screens made up a huge portion of the US art in the 1913 Armory Show, with between 24 and 25 on view, and all positioned near the entrance. She notes this was partly due to his connection with the elite who funded the show and lent works, yet it also pointed to what was considered essential about early 20th-century art. “For many this is what made art modern; modern art was more of a mindset, located not necessarily in the art created but in the creativity and originality of the artists themselves,” McCarthy writes.

Chanler was nothing if not original, as a somewhat manic 1900 photograph of the artist conveys. He has the end of a paintbrush in