Gari Melchers: An American Impressionist at Home and Abroad
The Bellarmine Museum
March 5 - May 22, 2015
Hugely successful during his own lifetime, the Detroit-born artist Julius Garibaldi ("Gari") Melchers left behind an artistic legacy that is as varied as it is compelling. From engaging peasant scenes inspired by his years at the Egmonds, Holland (where he shared a studio with the great American painter George Hitchcock in the late 19th century) to intimate portraits of mothers and their children, Melchers' oeuvre is inflected with a dynamic range of influences, including the Barbizon School, Impressionism, and Symbolism.
From this broad ranges of sources, Melchers created a style that was uniquely his own; remarkable for its insistent structural rigor and careful draughtsmanship (absorbed through his years at Dusseldorf's Royal Academy of Art) as well as a lyrical palette and keen observance of humanity. This exhibition, the first of its kind in our region, surveys more than a half-century of Melchers' career with key examples of the genres he favored, including landscape, genre scenes, and portraiture.
Read what the Hartford Courant's Susan Dunne had to say about this "delightful" exhibition.
Watch a recording of a fascinating lecture putting "Gari Melchers in Context" -- by Joanna Catron, curator, Gari Melchers Home and Studio, Falmouth, Va.