As a painter he was taken seriously and received his meed of praise with few dissenting voices. Almost every one in the press and magazines hailed him as the much-needed person--the man who technically knew how to paint. His pictures at no time ever sold very well, but that was for the reason perhaps that they never possessed an intimate human interest, not because they were indifferently painted. On the whole, though some of the elders looked askance at his broad brushing, or thought his themes somewhat material and superficial, he had no grievance of a Whistler kind against either critic or public. The art clubs elected him to membership, he spent his first summer after his return in a trip through the Erie Canal with the Tile Club, in 1880 he became a member of the Society of American Artists, and in 1883 its president. The same year he had organized and sent to Munich the first group of American pictures for exhibition there. A curiosity as to how art had been produced by other people, in other times and countries as well as our own, was always with Chase. He was a great traveller, a great student of art, a great haunter of galleries and museums. In the thirty or more years that I knew him I had met him at different times in almost every gallery of Europe. Only a year or so before the Great War I was working in the Uffizi one hot July afternoon after every one had left the place. I had been alone for several hours when I heard steps approaching me down the long corridor. It was late and one of the attendants was probably coming to tell me it was time to close. But no; instead of that I heard in very good English: “At it again, I see! At it again!” I turned around to find Chase standing there. He, too, had stayed on in the heat after the crowd had gone, and had no doubt been prying into some Titian or questioning some Rembrandt or Rubens! For many years he kept voyaging to Europe summer after summer. I never chanced to cross with him, but one spring, while bidding farewell to some friends who were sailing, I saw Chase jump out of a cab and scramble up the landing-stage--the last man to arrive--and still giving some directions over his shoulder to his colored man, who remained on the dock. On every steamer he sailed in he organized art, painted the cabin or smoke-room panels, sketched the captain, and made a portrait of the ship’s beauty. Arrived in Europe, he went to see not only exhibitions and museums but brothers of the craft in their studios. He spoke no French, Spanish, or Italian, and had only a limited vocabulary in German, but that made no difference. He got on better with Boldini and Alfred Stevens in Paris using the sign language than with Whistler in London exchanging biting English. Everywhere he was welcomed and treated as a man of distinction in his profession, and everywhere he saw something new and was perhaps influenced thereby.