Gari Melchers: An American Impressionist at Home and Abroad will be on view at the Bellarmine Museum of Art from March 5 – May 22, 2015.

Hugely successful during his own lifetime, the Detroit-born artist Julius Garibaldi (“Gari”) Melchers left behind an artistic legacy that is as varied as it is compelling. From engaging peasant scenes inspired by his years at Egmond aan Zee, Holland (where he shared a studio with the great American painter George Hitchcock in the late 19th century) to intimate portraits of mothers and their children, Melchers’ oeuvre is inflected with a dynamic range of influences, including the Barbizon School, Impressionism, and Symbolism. From this broad range of sources, Melchers created a style that was uniquely his own; remarkable for its insistent structural rigor and careful draughtsmanship (absorbed through his years at Dusseldorf’s Royal Academy of Art) as well as a lyrical palette and keen observance of humanity. This exhibition, the first of its kind in our region, surveys more than a half-century of Melchers’ career with key examples of the genres he favored, including landscape, genre scenes, and portraiture.

The exhibition is free and open to the public.