Gari Melchers (American, 1860-1932), Spring Landscape with Figure

Oil on canvas (lined), with monogram at lower right, period gilt frame.

Stretcher size 29 x 36 in.; Frame dimensions 36 x 43 in.

Albert Turner Smith and Ada Virginia Dickinson Smith, King George, Virginia;
by gift to their daughter and son-in-law, John Gray Pollock, Jr. and Minnie Gertrude Smith, Pollock, King George, Virginia, on the occasion of their marriage, 11 October 1914;

by inheritance to their daughter, Ada Virginia Pollock Fenlon, King George, Virginia, 1968;

by inheritance to her step-daughter, Jane Fenlon Rowe, Richmond, Virginia, 1994;

by inheritance to her daughter, Peyton Rowe, Richmond, Virginia, 2008.

Attribution and Conservation Note:
In April 2008, the painting was examined by Joseph Johnson of Corporate and Museum Frame, Inc., who concluded that it is a landscape by G. B. (Gari) Melchers. Subsequently, it was cleaned by Takashima Studio and reinstalled in what is believed to be its original circa 1850 gilt frame.

Julius Garibaldi "Gari" Melchers was an American painter and one of the leading proponents of naturalism in his generation. Born in Detroit to German-born sculptor Julius Theodore Melchers, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf at age seventeen and later at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger. In 1884, he founded an art colony at Egmond aan Zee in the Netherlands with American artist George Hitchcock.

Melchers received numerous honors including the Legion of Honor from France, the Order of the Red Eagle from Germany, and was a member of the National Academy of Design, the Royal Academy of Berlin, and the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts. From 1906 to 1916, Melchers served as fine arts advisor for Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia. In 1915, he returned to New York City and from 1920 to 1928 served as president of the New Society of Artists. In 1916, he and his wife, fellow artist Corinne Lawton Mackall, purchased Belmont estate in Falmouth, Virginia. Melcher’s work is held in major collections including the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Telfair Museum of Art.

With scattered retouch to sky visible under UV light.