Gari Melchers: Later Years

"Lady Reading - The Communicant"
by Gari Melchers

"Gari Melchers' art continued to enjoy official recognition in his later years. More one-man shows were held during the last decade and a half of his life than during the whole rest of his career. This period of intense activity ended abruptly with his death on November 30, 1932. Early in November Melchers helped to mount a major retrospective exhibition of his works at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. Apparently fatigued from the task of preparing the exhibition, the seventy-two-year-old artist was ordered by his doctors to return to Belmont to rest. 

After bathing and shaving on the morning of the thirtieth, the artist returned to bed to read his mail, which contained numerous congratulatory letters on the academy show. He succumbed peacefully to a heart attack at 9:30 a.m. Although his passing seemed sudden, it was not altogether unanticipated. The artist is reported to have had premonitions of his death, telling his friends that he would not live out the year but that he felt grateful to have lived long enough to see the opening of the academy show.

His funeral was held on Friday, December 2, at Belmont. A delegation headed by Robert Underwood Johnson, then secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and former US ambassador to Italy, represented the New York art community on this somber occasion. The American Academy also honored Melchers by hanging black crepe over the entrance doorway of the galleries in which his works were then being shown. In conformance with a desire expressed in Melchers' will, his body was cremated. His ashes were placed in an urn that is now set into a wall near the entranceway of the fieldstone studio at Belmont. The remains of Corinne Melchers, who died in 1955, were later placed alongside those of her husband in this final resting place, which is marked by a bronze plaque."

To be continued

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