|
'The Sermon' won rave reviews at the Paris Salon of 1886, making a name for its creator, American expatriate Gari Melchers. On loan from the Smithsonian, it goes on view today at his studio in Falmouth.
This pen-and-ink study by Gari Melchers is in Belmont's collection. |
By CLINT SCHEMMER
An American masterpiece has come to town, taking up residence in the place that can best tell its story--the Gari Melchers Home and Studio in Falmouth.
"The Sermon," the sweep-you-off-your-feet painting that put Melchers on the map in the international art world, goes on view today at Belmont. Created in the Netherlands during the artist's youth, it can now be enjoyed by the public where Melchers happily spent his final years.
The property of the Smithsonian Institution's American Art Museum in Washington, it has never been exhibited here, yet is the most critically acclaimed painting of his career.
Rich in hue, monumental in size, full of quiet mystery, this is the artwork that cemented Melchers' reputation as a top American artist of his day.
It earned him an honorable mention in the Paris Salon of 1886, meeting the highest standards in the world in the city where all the fine artists of the time were flocking to compete, Belmont curator Joanna Catron said.
"That's really something for an American, because [to the French] they don't know anything, they're barbarians," she said. "It's very, very big. He is painting so technically well and with such expressive power, in a French way, that he passed muster among a sea of thousands."
The sensitive, poetic painting depicts a young Dutch woman who has nodded off during a church service, prompting a reproachful look from the older matron seated beside her. Leavening realism with humor, it captures every detail of class, costume, lighting and psychology.
The public loved "The Sermon" when it was first shown in Paris, the era's most important exhibition venue. They prized the honest, yet nostalgic, way it depicted rural life.
Peasant painting was then the rage in the French capital, and this work was judged a real feat for Melchers. Critics predicted he had a promising future.
"The American artist is endowed with such a sagacity of observation that the ordinary ways of the modern Netherlands will find, very probably, in this young man of twenty-six years, a painter as faithful to them as were the illustrious contemporaries of Rembrandt," Leon Gauchez wrote of Melchers in the Paris journal L'Art in July 1886.
Indeed, from then on, Melchers never wanted for exhibitions, patronage or recognition. "The Sermon" established him as the leading U.S. practitioner of the movement called "rustic naturalism."
He went on to paint a president and a prime minister, create murals for great American public buildings, represent his country in international expositions, and headed the commission that established the National Gallery of Art in Washington. But "The Sermon" was his creative breakthrough, Catron said.
To modern eyes, Melchers' snapshot of working-class life in the Dutch village of Egmond-aan-Zee, where he founded an art colony with fellow expatriate George Hitchcock, brings to mind the works of American illustrator Norman Rockwell. His work tells an interesting anecdote, borrowing its tight framing from photography, then a relatively new medium of great influence on many painters.
It must be seen in person to be properly appreciated, because doing so is just like walking into the little rural church where it is set, as if one could travel back in time to the long-vanished world that Melchers observed so painstakingly.
The Smithsonian has lent the painting for up to two years to Belmont, where it now joins other major Melchers works on display in the sandstone studio he built on a hill overlooking the Rappahannock River's fall line.
Visitors can view "The Sermon" in the Studio Pavilion gallery, along with studies for it in Belmont's collection, in a special "spotlight" exhibition beginning today.
In coordination with the exhibit, Catron will present a background talk on "The Sermon: Icon of American Expatriate Painting" on Sunday, Sept. 9, at 2 p.m. in the Pavilion.
Clint Schemmer: 540/368-5029| What: "The Sermon," with the artist's studies for it, and other works on loan Where: Gari Melchers Home and Studio, 224 Washington St., Falmouth. The 26-acre Belmont estate, former residence of Melchers and his wife, Corinne, is part of the University of Mary Washington. It is a state and national historic landmark. When: Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, 1-5 p.m. Cost: $10, $5 for ages 6 to 18, free for ages 5 and younger Info: 540/654-1015 Web: garimelchers.org |
