I took my own Biographical Sketch of Harry Chase and asked ChatGPT to rewrite it in the style of Dan Brown, this was the result:

A Lost Light of the Gilded Age

Interlude I – Present Day, New York Public Library

Dust swirls in the shaft of a single reading lamp. A researcher flips open a leather-bound ledger, brittle pages whispering with every turn. On the margin of a faded auction record, three words leap out, circled in ink from another century:

Harry Chase. Missing.

The scholar exhales. Few remember the name. Fewer still know the story. But the ledger holds a clue. A trail waiting to be followed.

Early Life

February 2, 1853. Woodstock, Vermont.

Henry Seymour Chase Jr.—Harry. Born into a dynasty of doctors. His father, grandfather, great-grandfather: all physicians. His father was both M.D. and D.D.S. The bloodline demanded medicine.

But Harry had other plans. By four, he sketched from Harper’s Weekly. By adolescence, he haunted the art district of St. Louis, drawn like a magnet to the smell of paint, the chatter of canvases drying in cluttered studios.

James Reeve Stuart, his mentor, told tales of Munich, of the Royal Bavarian Academy. To Harry, the name itself was a password. By seventeen, his decision was final.

“Pa, I want to go to Europe.”

The words cracked open a destiny.

Interlude II – Present Day, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis

Autumn leaves scatter across rows of marble. A lone figure kneels before a weathered headstone:

Harry Chase. 1853–1889.

Thirty-six years. That was all. The visitor brushes moss from the inscription, eyes narrowing. Nearby, a stone angel seems to look down, wings streaked by rain.

How had such brilliance ended in obscurity?

The ground beneath holds secrets.

Royal Bavarian Academy

July 1872. At nineteen, Harry crossed the Atlantic. With him—William Merritt Chase, another artist from St. Louis, no blood relation, though whispers of kinship would persist.

Munich. The Royal Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. Its professors were legends: Kaulbach, Lindenschmit, Ramberg, Barth. And Konstantinos Volanakis, master of the sea.

Harry threw himself into study. He painted coastlines, harbors, vessels battered by storms. He wandered Europe—Britain, Scandinavia, Venice, Belgium, the Netherlands—recording the Old World in color and light.

His canvases became more than paintings. They were maps. Clues.

Interlude III – Present Day, Amsterdam

A curator slides open a drawer in the Rijksmuseum archives. Canvas edges peek from protective tissue.

One work bears the signature: H. Chase.

But the registry card lists a question mark beside the date. The curator frowns. The style is unmistakable—Dutch Impressionist. Yet this painting was never cataloged among Harry Chase’s known works.

A lost fragment has surfaced.

Return to St. Louis & First One-Man Show

1876 - Harry returned with a trunk full of canvases. After a brief stop in New York, he reopened his studio in St. Louis.

That November, Pettes & Leathe Gallery displayed forty of his works. Crowds packed the gallery. The closing auction sold every piece. $1,600—an enormous sum.

The city went mad. Newspapers called it “Harry Chase Mania.”

Pettes & Leathe offered financial backing for a return to Europe. Harry agreed without hesitation.

But before departing, he married Laura Emeline “Emma” Eames—Emma, his childhood sweetheart. The same evening, they boarded a train. Their honeymoon was the Atlantic crossing.

Interlude IV – Present Day, Paris, Quai Voltaire

An antiquarian bookseller slides a brittle exhibition catalog across the counter. Salon de Paris, 1878.

On page 112, the listing jumps out: “Chase (Harry), Marine.”

The scholar grips the edge of the page. The entry is real. Proof of his triumph. Proof of his presence in the pantheon.

But the catalog raises a chilling question: Where is the painting now?

Paris & The Salon

1877–78. Harry and Emma lived a Bohemian life in Paris’s Latin Quarter. He studied under Paul Constant Soyer, whose students had included Mary Cassatt. Emma dreamed of authorship.

But Harry focused on the gatekeeper: the Salon. In 1878, he succeeded. His work was accepted, his name reported across America. That same year, he debuted at the National Academy of Design in New York.

Harry Chase had arrived.

Mesdag & The Hague

In 1879, Harry apprenticed himself to Hendrik Willem Mesdag in The Hague. Nearly a year he worked among the Dutch masters. They accepted him as kin, a rare honor for an outsider.

The Salon admitted his work again. Another victory. Another whisper of destiny.

Interlude V – Present Day, A Private Collection, Boston

A shipping crate is pried open. Inside—an oil painting of a storm-lashed schooner, the signature almost lost to grime.

The dealer stares. The brushwork is familiar. The subject electric.

But there’s something else. On the stretcher frame, faint pencil scrawl: “Exhibited, 1879.”

This canvas had been missing for over a century.

Return to St. Louis & Second One-Man Show

Late 1879. Harry and Emma returned to St. Louis. Over eighty works, shipped faithfully during their time abroad, had already built anticipation.

In March 1880, sixty-four paintings filled Pettes & Leathe. The auction stunned the city. Six to seven thousand dollars changed hands. Harry Chase was no longer a rising star. He was a force.

The East Coast awaited.

New Bedford, Massachusetts

From 1880 to 1881, Harry immersed himself in maritime life. He painted ships, bought a yacht, joined the New Bedford Yacht Club. His daughter, Rhoda, was born.

His success was relentless. Collectors clamored. Commissions multiplied. The sea itself seemed to belong to him.

New York City

By 1881, Harry’s studio in New York buzzed with activity. He exhibited everywhere—National Academy of Design, Pennsylvania Academy, Boston Art Club, Salmagundi Sketch Club.

Summers, he returned to New Bedford, sailing the Bonnie, painting with feverish intensity.

Harry was building not just a career, but a legacy.

Interlude VI – Present Day, Sewanee, Tennessee

In a forgotten attic trunk, brittle papers rustle. A faded medical ledger records the name: Harry S. Chase.

Dates. Symptoms. Scribbled notes. The handwriting falters into illegibility.

The last line chills:

“Condition worsening. No cure.”

Honors & Fame

1883 - Harry elected Associate National Academician. His son Irwin born.

1885 - Hallgarten Prize. Vice President of Salmagundi Sketch Club. His name was synonymous with prestige. His patrons were titans—Vanderlip, Billings, Layton, Laughlin. Paintings sold before they dried.

He had everything.

And then—everything unraveled.

Insanity & Death

Autumn 1885. Harry returned from sailing ill. At first indigestion, then hallucinations. Delusions. By year’s end, he was committed to Hudson River State Hospital for the Insane.

A year later, with no improvement, his family sent him to Tennessee, into the care of a man with no formal training.

For four years, he fought. Periods of lucidity. Then plunges into madness.

October 1, 1889. Sewanee. Harry Chase died at thirty-six.

His body returned to St. Louis. Bellefontaine Cemetery received him. His name faded.

Interlude VII – Present Day, Christie’s Auction House, New York

The gavel slams. The crowd gasps. A marine painting, unsigned but unmistakable, sells for a staggering sum.

The catalog notes the artist only as “Unknown, American School.”

The buyer smiles. He knows better. He knows the hand behind the brush.

Harry Chase has returned.

Epilogue

What might he have become? The American Turner. A rival to Winslow Homer. A master lost to time.

Instead, his story fractured. Brilliance devoured by madness. A career cut short at its zenith.

Yet whispers remain. Paintings vanish, then resurface. Auction records hint at lost works. Shadows surround his final years.

Harry Chase. A name forgotten by history. A mystery waiting to be solved.

Somewhere, in a gallery, an attic, or a vault, his light still waits—ready to blaze again.