Gari Melchers: Study in Paris

"The Letter" by Gari Melchers

"In 1881 Gari Melchers left Düsseldorf for Paris where he studied for the following three years at the Académie Julian and briefly at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The curriculum was far less rigorous than that offered at Düsseldorf. Academie Julian students spent most of their time executing drawings and painting from life. Instructors were some of the best-known academic painters of the day. 

His style did change after his arrival in Paris, most noticeably the brightening of his palette. The rich browns, grays and tans of his Düsseldorf style were replaced by the brighter flesh tones of the face and the resilient color accents of the background. Throughout his years he avoided the degeneration of form that by this time had begun to trouble many. His monumental group compositions of the 1880, for example, are light-filled, colorful, and yet replete with solid figures and furnishings. Even with the high-saturation color in his late paintings, the artist still tenaciously retained volume as an indispensable component of his style.

Melchers' 'The Letter' is a study of two peasant women of Brittany who have temporarily put aside their chores to consider a newly arrived letter in front of a luminous window. Much care and delight is taken in the depiction of the window light, which glows with a brilliant bluish cast, modeling the sturdy shapes and volumes of figures and objects. It is a seminal work in which the artist established both a type of subject matter and a stylistic approach which inform what are perhaps the most distinguished works of his career. Genre painting would preoccupy him during the 1880s, and to a slightly lesser degree for the rest of his life, providing the iconographic vehicle for some of his most important artistic statements. 

The careful study of the effects of light in an interior environment was also of overriding importance in all phases of his development. Finally, asymmetrical but balanced compositions would be frequently employed by Melchers in the future. The acceptance of 'The Letter' in the Salon of 1882 testified to the precocious abilities of the young Detroit painter and also contributed to a growing awareness of Melchers' work.

The reputation which he began to establish in Paris in the early 1880s would develop in the next two decades, as painting after painting won entry and awards in the annual French shows."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Gari Melchers: His Life and Art" by Joseph G. Dreiss.)