Young Melchers

Not to be confused with the National Academy of Design is the American Academy of Arts & Letters, an assemblage of unofficial Immortals who maintain a gallery and clubroom in Manhattan's frozen north, at No. 633 West 155th St. Four weeks ago the U. S. Immortals assembled to honor one of their most distinguished members, 72-year-old Gari Melchers. On the 50th anniversary of his first exhibited painting, "The Letter," shown in the Paris Salon of 1882, they held a dinner, presented him with a gold medal and turned over their gallery to a memorial exhibition of his work. Last week they draped the door in black and tacked gold palm leaves to the frame of his self-portrait. Gari Melchers had died suddenly at his Virginia country place, of heart failure.

Few U. S. artists have been so honored in their lifetime. Born in Detroit in 1860, Gari Melchers was sent abroad at 17 to study painting--at Duesseldorf because his cautious parents considered Paris no place for a young man from Detroit. At 29 he won the grand medal of honor in the Paris Salon, an honor only two other U. S. artists have won (John Singer Sargent and James Abbott McNeill Whistler).

He set up studios all over Europe, in Paris, Fontainebleau, Picardy; in Egmont, Holland (whence came many of his best known canvases); in Weimar; in Italy. Since he seldom opened his mail, never left forwarding addresses, friends never knew where to find him. His shirtfront became a flower bed for ribbons--officer of the Legion of Honor, knight of the Order of St. Michael of Bavaria, officer of the Order of the Red Eagle (Prussia), officer of the Grand Ducal Order of the White Falcon of Sacony. In 1914 Gari Melchers prudently removed himself to the land of his birth. His pictures hang in 21 public museums. For the past two years he has been president of the august Century Association.

All honest modernists admired and respected Gari Melchers. He was an Academician, but an Academician who continued to grow. His style, from the polished realism of his early Paris canvases through the brightly colored Dutch peasant scenes of the 1900's to the solid portraits of his later work, was never fixed. At the age of 71 he produced a nude study, "Virginia Beach," which the Whitney Museum hung last month with its biennial exhibition of young modernists.

For 16 years Artist Leon Gordon has had the studio next to Gari Melchers' in New York. He wrote:

"Whenever I tired and laid aside my brush I'd drop in on him. There he was, painting away. . . . He was one of the youngest men I have ever known."

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