Gari Melchers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gari Melchers or Julius Melchers (August 11, 1860 - November 30, 1932) was an American artist. He was one of the leading American proponents of naturalism.
He was born at Detroit, Michigan. The son of a sculptor, at seventeen he was sent to Düsseldorf to study art under von Gebhardt, and after three years went to Paris, where he worked at the Académie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux Arts where he studied under Lefèvbre and Boulanger. Attracted by the pictorial side of Holland, he settled at Egmond. His first important Dutch picture, The Sermon, brought him honorable mention at the Paris Salon of 1886.
He became a member of the National Academy of Design, New York; the Royal Academy of Berlin; Socit Nationale des Beaux Arts, Paris; International Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, London, and the Secession Society, Munich; and, besides receiving a number of medals, his decorations include the Legion of Honor, France; the order of the Red Eagle, Germany; and knight of the Order of St Michael, Bavaria. In 1889, he and John Singer Sargent became the first American painters to win a Grand Prize at the Paris Universal Exposition.
In 1909 he was appointed Professor of Art at the Grand Ducal Saxony School of Art in Weimar, Germany. In 1915 he returned to New York City to open a studio at the Beaux-Arts building at Bryant Park. From 1920 to 1928 he served as the president of the New Society of Artists. He spent his final years at Belmont Estate in Falmouth, Virginia, near Fredericksburg.
Besides portraits, his chief works are: The Supper at Emmaus, in the Krupp collection at Essen; The Family, National Gallery, Berlin; Mother and Child, Luxembourg; and the decoration, at the Congressional Library, Washington, Peace and War.
[edit] External Links
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
