Visual art
Gari Melchers
1860–1932 · painter, muralist
Detroit-born naturalist painter, son of sculptor Julius Melchers, who later painted murals of Detroit history for the city's Main Library.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Fredericksburg, Virginia
aged 72- Birth name
- Julius Garibaldi Melchers
- Also known as
- Julius Garibaldi Melchers
- Detroit years
- 1860–1877, 1921
- Field
- Visual art
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Melchers grew up in Detroit as the son of the German-born sculptor Julius Theodore Melchers, who carved many of the city's nineteenth-century statues and ran an art school. At seventeen he left for the Düsseldorf Academy in Germany, then studied in Paris and settled for many years in the Netherlands, where his scenes of Dutch peasants, fishermen and religious life made him one of the leading American naturalist painters. His large murals for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago ended up in the University of Michigan library in Ann Arbor. He kept ties to his hometown, and in 1921 he completed a set of three murals on the history of Detroit for the new Main Library of the Detroit Public Library on Woodward Avenue. He spent his last years at Belmont, his estate near Fredericksburg, Virginia, now a museum, and in 1932 received the gold medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Highlights
- Born in Detroit, son of sculptor Julius Theodore Melchers
- Three murals on Detroit history for the Main Library (1921)
- His 1893 Columbian Exposition murals are at the University of Michigan
- Gold medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1932)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1921
Detroit Public Library — Main Library
Holds his set of three murals on the history of Detroit.