GARI MELCHERS 1860-1932
My Garden, 1900-03
Oil on canvas, 41 X 40" (104.14 x 101. 60 cm.)
Signed, lower left
Museum purchase, 922-0-102

Internationally celebrated as a major late nineteenth-century painter, Gari Melchers produced hundreds of paintings in studios in France, Holland, Germany, and America. His success began early when his painting, The Letter (c. 1882, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), was accepted at the Paris Salon in 1882. In 1889, Melchers was awarded a grand prize medal in the American painting section at the Universal Exposition in Paris, an honor bestowed only upon Melchers and John Singer Sargent. That Melchers was an honored painter in Europe and America is clear from his long exhibition history, the awards he won, the commissions, and the number of his works purchased by museums and collectors in this country and abroad.
The basis for Melchers's art can be found in his childhood within Detroit's German immigrant community and his early instruction, both from his German-born artist father and at the academy in Dusseldorf, where he learned sound academic principles and a commitment to solid images. After graduation Melchers entered the Acad6mie Julian in Paris and subsequently was accepted at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1884, he joined George Hitchcock in establishing a permanent studio in the Egmonds, Holland. Monumental paintings like The Sermon (1886, National Museum of American Art), and In Holland (1887, Belmont, The Gari Melchers Estate and Memorial Gallery, Fredericksburg, Va.), which used as models the townsfolk of the Egmond area, established Melchers's reputation as a painter of Dutch scenes that celebrate the virtues of an unsophisticated life of hard work and pious reverence. However, Melchers's diversity of styles and subjects is remarkable. At the beginning of his career in the early 1880s, he painted the peasants of Brittany and Holland in realistic depictions based upon his Dusseldorf training, the Hague School artists, and the Paris Salon. In the late 1880s and the 1890s, his art was influenced by Symbolism, and at the turn of the century he turned to Impressionism for inspiration. Melchers's interest in Impressionism, as with other styles of painting, was assimilated from sources in France, Germany, and America. This combination, seen in My Garden, has been appropriately described as a "lightened palette of academic Impressionism, which, combined with careful drawing, constitutes an international style hailed by contemporary critics."
My Garden was painted at George Hitchcock's home, "Schuylenburg," in Egmond aan den Hoef, one of three Dutch villages clustered along the North Sea shore that share the name of Egmond. Beginning in 1884 when they shared a studio, Melchers and Hitchcock maintained an enduring friendship. By the early 1890s, Egmond had become the summer home to students attracted by their success. Because of this influx, including many Americans on break from art schools in Paris, Hitchcock established a school at Schuylenburg. While Melchers chose not to teach on a formal basis, he was active in art discussions and critiques. In 1903, Melchers married Corinne Mackall, who had studied with Hitchcock. Although they established their own home and Melchers painted a number of outdoor scenes there, he continued to paint at Schuylenburg as well.
Exact dating of the landscapes and interior genre scenes from this period is not always possible. In Gari Melchers: A Retrospective Exhibition, the work is dated c. 1903 and described as "the first of several intimate garden scenes . . . . 116 Based upon its style and title, suggesting the period before Melchers and Corinne had their own garden, the date of 1900-1903 seems likely.
The scene is from across the pond towards the impressive seventeenth- century farmhouse and large tree-shaded lawn where three servant girls, dressed in black and white uniforms, share a moment of conversation. A postcard from the same period, with a similar viewpoint and showing the statue of a cherub standing in the pond, may have served as Melchers's initial inspiration for the painting, or the picture may have inspired the postcard. Whatever the case, the bold, robust brushstrokes and glorious palette of yellows, pinks, blues, and green infuse the setting with vitality and with the glowing warmth of an idyllic autumn day.

DIANE LESKO