Gari Melchers
Crowning a hill, which is the triumphant result of a series of terraces rising from the town of Falmouth, opposite Fredericksburg, is Belmont, the home of Gari Melchers, an American artist, who has been more honored abroad than any of our living painters, with the exception, perhaps, of John Singer Sargent.
Born in Detroit, Gari Melchers left America when he was seventeen, to pursue his studies in Europe.
His apprentice days were spent in Dusseldorf and Paris, where his professional debut in 1889 gained for him the coveted Grand Prix—Sargent and Whistler being the only other American painters similarly honored.
Italy had to resign to Holland the prestige of lending her country to the genius of Mr. Melchers, for he intended to reside in Italy, but owing to the outbreak of the cholera there he settled at Engmond instead. His studio borrowed the interest of the sea on one side and the charm of a lazy canal on the other, and over its door were inscribed the words: “Wahr und Klar” (Truth and Clarity). Here he worked at those objective and realistic pictures of Dutch life and scenes; and free from all scholastic pretense, he painted the serene, yet colorful panorama of Holland.
Christian Brinton says of the art of Gari Melchers that it is explicit and veracious. Prim interiors are permeated with a light that envelopes all things with a note of sadness. Exterior scenes reflect the shifting of seasons or the precise hour of day. He paints air as well as light and color. Without exaggeration, he manages to suggest the intervening aerial medium between the seer and the thing seen.
Mr. Melchers has no set formula.
In 1918 there was a wonderful “one man” display of his art at the Corcoran Art Gallery, and in 1919, the Loan Exhibition, held by the Copley Society at the Boston Art Club, was the second of the two important recent events in the artist’s career since his returning to America. Here his work has undergone some perceptible change, gaining lightness and freshness of vision, which shows his reaction to a certain essential Americanism. Mr. Melchers attacks whatever suits his particular mood, and his art is not suggestive of a subjective temperament.
“The Sermon”—“The Communion”—“The Pilots”—“The Shipbuilders”—“The Sailor and His Sweetheart”—“The Open Door” are some of his well-known canvases. His reputation as a portrait painter rests upon a secure foundation.
His awards include medals from Berlin, Antwerp, Vienna, Paris and Munich, Ansterdam, Dresden, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and many other medals for art exhibitions.