Gari Melchers’ painting The Crimson Rambler, on loan from a private collection, will be on display at Gari Melchers Home and Studio through June 7. The Crimson Rambler features a rose arbor in full bloom with a lawn statue in the background. Melchers painted it about 1915, when he was living in Holland. It’s unusual for a Melchers painting because it is strictly a garden picture, incorporating no living person or animal. Because Melchers preferred figure painting, this is his only “pure garden portrait,” said Joanna Catron ’79, curator. “Melchers wholly gave in to the broken brushwork and chromatic possibilities of a lush garden in sunlight, rendering the sensation of a garden as opposed to a literal reproduction of one, a key objective of impressionism,” she said. Gari Melchers Home and Studio at Belmont is administered by the University of Mary Washington. … [Read more...]