International naturalism and American portrait

Discover Gari Melchers, an American painter trained in Europe, known for his Dutch villagers, his naturalistic religious scenes, his portraits and his large public settings.

Julius Garibaldi Melchers, known as Gari Melchers, was born in Detroit in 1860. His father Julius Theodore Melchers was a sculptor and artisan decorator. At seventeen, the young painter left to study at the Düsseldorf Academy with von Gebhardt, then moved to Paris in 1881. At the Julian Academy, he worked with Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger, discovered Bastien-Lepage and adopted a naturalism based on direct observation, light and the dignity of ordinary models. With the painter George Hitchcock, Melchers set up a workshop in Egmond aan Zee, a fishing village in the Netherlands. He represents working women, families, sailors and religious services in sober interiors. The Sermon, presented at the Paris Salon in 1886, established its international reputation. The monumental composition, the colors retained and the individualized faces renewed the devotional scene. Melchers received commissions in the United States: murals for the Colombian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, sets for the Library of Congress and, later, a cycle devoted to the history of Detroit. At the same time, he led a brilliant career as a portrait painter, painting industrialists, political leaders, artists and families. At the same time, he led a brilliant career as a portrait painter, painting industrialists, political leaders, artists and families. At the same time, he led a brilliant career as a portrait painter, painting industrialists, political leaders, artists and families. His teaching in Weimar and then his artistic functions in the United States linked institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1916, he bought Belmont near Fredericksburg, Virginia, a house and studio which today preserves a vast body of his work. His latest paintings combine portraits, gardens, landscapes and interiors in a clearer touch. The "Gari Melchers" selection offers its own journey on this subject. His reading favors atmosphere.

Melchers gives ordinary life the scale of public painting: an office, a work or a face become bearers of collective dignity.