Gari Melchers
Gari Melchers
1860 - 1932
American painter. Son of a Westphalian sculptor, Julius Theodore Melchers (1829–1909), he studied at the Königliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf with Eduard von Gebhardt (1838–1925) and Peter Janssen (1844–1908) between 1877 and 1881. He then moved to Paris, where he attended the Académie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under the instruction of Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre.
In 1884 Melchers established himself in the small Dutch town of Egmond-aan-den-Hoef and shared a studio in nearby Egmond-aan-Zee with the American painter George Hitchcock. His most important large-scale early works, such as The Sermon (1886; Washington, DC, N. Mus. Amer. A.) and The Communion (1888; Ithaca, NY, Cornell U., Johnson Mus. A.), depict the peasants of this region at prayer and work. They also show the influence of Max Liebermann and Fritz von Uhde in their use of bright natural light and sympathetic portrayal of the worker.
During the 1890s Melchers began painting murals and works with biblical themes. His Arts of Peace and Arts of War (both 1893; Ann Arbor, U. MI Mus. A.) are two large-scale lunettes painted for the Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, in 1893. These works show the influence of his friend Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Melchers’s Last Supper (Lamplight) (Richmond, VA Mus. F.A.) is perhaps the finest example of his Symbolist-inspired religious works. The influence of Impressionism is increasingly evident in the artist’s domestic interiors of the early 1900s, such as the Open Door (Falmouth, VA, Melchers Mem. Gal.). In 1915 Melchers returned to America, where he purchased the Belmont estate in Falmouth, VA, which contains an important collection of his work. He also maintained a studio on 40th Street in New York. [Joseph G. Dreiss. "Melchers, Gari." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 9, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T056629.]
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