#Melchers hashtag - Bluesky

@mdstamper.bsky.social

1 year ago

American artist Gari Melchers painted Marie (West Indian) around 1925, during a trip to the West Indies. The subject of the painting, whom Melchers called "Ma Petite," was one of the painter's favorite models. The impressionistic portrait depicts a mature dark-skinned West Indian woman (Marie) standing against a green and brown background. She wears a white knee-length dress and a white kerchief on her head. She leans against a tree. The artist's signature appears in the lower right corner. Julius Garibaldi (Gari) Melchers was a distinguished late-19th and early-20th-century artist whose work was well known in Europe and the United States as a leading American proponent of naturalism. He spent the majority of his career as an expatriate in Europe to great acclaim, but did accept commissions that brought him to the U.S. for prolonged periods. His marriage to Corinne Lawton Mackall of Savannah, Georgia led to a connection with that city’s Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences (later Telfair Museums). There he assumed a role in acquiring more than seventy paintings for the museum’s permanent collection. Melchers is known for his paintings of everyday Dutch life and religious scenes; impressionistic landscapes, murals, and portraits. During the final decade of his life, Melchers executed murals for the Detroit Public Library and the Missouri State Capitol. Numerous solo exhibitions of his work were held, including one at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, which opened just before the artist died on November 30, 1932. After his death, in an era of modernist abstraction and a new, vital realism, his stylistically conservative paintings were viewed by many as old-fashioned. Today his paintings are found in numerous collections and museums throughout the country

“Marie (West Indian)” by Gari Melchers (American) - Gouache on paper / c. 1925 - Morris Museum of Art (Augusta, Georgia) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #MorrisMuseumofArt #GariMelchers #womensart #Melchers #AmericanArt #AmericanArtist #portraitofawoman #gouache #gouacheart #artwork #fineart #bskyart