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Dear Joan of Art,

I would like to know more about the artist who created the beautiful painting called The Bride, which is in your museum collection. I saw the painting years ago, and now that my daughter is getting married, I wanted to revisit the image and learn about its creator. Can you help?

Dear Visitor:

The Bride was painted by Gari Melchers. Here is an excerpt on the artist from The Britannica Encyclopedia of American Art (New York, NY: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1973).

"Melchers, Gari (1860–1932). Figure and portrait painter, the son of a Parisian-trained woodcarver and decorator who emigrated from Germany to Detroit, Mich., where Melchers was born. The youth went to Düsseldorf in 1877, where he studied art until 1881; he then attended the Academie Julien in Paris. … In 1884 he established a studio in Paris and one in Egmond, a fishing village on the coast of Holland. His portrayals of the villagers and their life won him an international reputation.

"Melchers often painted his Dutch subjects in a luminous, light gray tonality; at other times his brushwork and color ran to a higher key, in a kind of sturdy impressionism.… His realism, which seemed in his day unaffected, now seems anecdotal and somewhat sentimental. Cosmopolitan and eclectic, he was a semi-expatriate, a semi-realist and a semi-impressionist, gifted with facility in characterization and a decorative flair in composition."

Melchers's house and studio, Belmont, are open to the public and located in Fredericksburg, Virginia; I recommend a visit, if you are in the area. The museum does not have a Web site, but you can read more about this attraction at the following URL:

Simply Fredericksburg
http://www.simplyfredericksburg.com/history/belmont.shtml

Congratulations on the upcoming wedding!

Sincerely,
Joan of Art

Pictured: Gari Melchers, 1860–1932, The Bride, about 1907, oil, 27 5/8 x 16 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly.