Gari Melchers

Melchers, Julius Garibaldi

American, 1860 - 1932

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American artist (1860-1932)

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A band of several galloping horses and riders move across the center of this vertical painting. The color palette is dominated by blended earthy brown, green, and pale pink. The horses, which have reddish-brown coats and tails, nearly span the width of the painting. They move to our left with their legs fully extended. Underneath the horses’ flying legs lies the body of a man. The felled rider faces upward, his eyes closed and his legs splayed. He has a light brown beard, mustache, and hair, and pale tan skin. He wears brown riding boots with black tops, white breeches, and a pink jersey with black sleeves. His riding helmet, with a matching pink cover, lies behind his head on the ground. At least three additional horses are in the band, and the two foremost have empty saddles. The two horses beyond them, farther into the picture, have male riders, who wear riding outfits and helmets in colors of smudged and blended orange, lavender purple, and green. They also have brown mustaches and beards. The band races through a field painted with a muddy green interspersed with strokes of orange and white. The horizon line is high, just above the level of the horses’ backs, about four-fifths of the way up the painting. Blue sky peeks out amid a mixture of pale pink and yellow clouds above. There are trees in the background indicated by a few strokes and dashes of paint. The painting style is loose and brushy throughout, without sharp detail or lines, except for the sketched-in black lines that delineate the bodies and tack of the horses.
Edgar Degas, Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey, 1866, reworked 1880-1881 and c. 1897, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1999.79.10

Scene from the Steeplechase: The Fallen Jockey

Edgar Degas · 1866, reworked 1880-1881 and c. 1897 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1999.79.10

Bibliography

1928

  • Lewis-Hind, Henriette. Gari Melchers, Painter. New York, 1928.

1984

  • Dreiss, Joseph G. Gari Melchers: His Works in the Belmont Collection. Charlottesville, Virginia, 1984.

1986

  • Stott, Annette. "American Painters Who Worked in the Netherlands, 1880-1914." Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1986.

1990

  • Lesko, Diane. Gari Melchers: A Retrospective Exhibition. Exh. cat. Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, 1990 (followed by tour to 4 other venues).

1998

  • Torchia, Robert Wilson, with Deborah Chotner and Ellen G. Miles. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part II. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1998: 3-4.