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In a wallpapered room with a window to our right, a woman to our right sits at a frame holding needlework while a woman wearing a black and white maid’s outfit stands facing her, to our left, in this nearly square painting. Both women have pale complexions and light brown hair loosely pulled up. The woman doing needlework faces our left in profile. She wears a pastel pink shawl or blouse with a long skirt patterned with gray, black, and white. She looks at her work as she pulls a needle and thread with her right hand, farther from us. The needlework is stretched on an easel-like frame so the top can be angled toward the seamstress. The maid wears a white cap and a white apron over a long-sleeved, black dress. She holds a small basket and seems to pull out or sort through yellow and white thread. The wall behind the women is patterned with bunches of dusky-pink flowers linked by baby-blue ribbons, against a field of pale, golden yellow. Sunlight pours through the window to our right, which is framed with periwinkle-blue curtains. On a table along that wall near us, a vase holds a bunch of leggy, magenta-purple flowers. A painting hanging over the seated woman’s head is done with muted tones of brown, blue, and brick red, and it shows a person on horseback in a landscape. The maid stands in front of a white mantlepiece that holds, from left to right, a white ceramic vase with white and yellow daises, a bronze-colored, sculpted bust of a woman, and a blue and white porcelain plate or bowl tipped up so we see the inside. A wood table with a wide, pedestal foot stands between us and the maid. It is covered with a periwinkle-blue cloth and holds a glass vase with yellow and orange flowers, a sea-glass green lamp with a white shade, a book, and possibly some papers. Lavender and royal-purple cloth is strewn across a wooden chair immediately in front of us, at the bottom center of the painting. The floor is painted with blended shades of mauve, pink, and tan. The artist signed the work with dark paint in the lower right corner: “Gari Melchers.”

Gari Melchers

Penelope, 1910

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 136.37 × 126.05 cm (53 11/16 × 49 5/8 in.)

framed: 167.96 × 160.02 × 13.34 cm (66 1/8 × 63 × 5 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund)

Accession Number

2015.19.3

Artists / Makers

Gari Melchers (painter) American, 1860 - 1932

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

lower right: Gari Melchers

Provenance

The artist [1860-1932]; purchased 22 January 1911 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2015 by the National Gallery of Art.

Associated Names

Corcoran Gallery of Art

Exhibition History

1910: Third Exhibition: Oil Paintings by Contemporary American Artists, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 10 December 1910 - 22 January 1911, no. 39.

1911: Exhibition of Pictures by Gari Melchers, Montross Gallery, New York, 1-15 March 1911, no. 8.

1918: Paintings by Gari Melchers, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1918, no. 6.

1927: Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings by Gari Melchers, Detroit Institute of Art, October 1927, no. 16.

1930: Exhibition of a Retrospection Collection of Paintings Representative of the Life Work of Gari Melchers, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 2 February - 2 March 1930, no. 8.

1934: Memorial Exhibition of Paintings by Gari Melchers, Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, Savannah, 2 March - 1 April 1934, no. 17.

1950: Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, Virginia, 15 June - November 1950, no catalogue.

1963: A Century and a Half of American Painting: Selections from the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Dulin Gallery of Art, Knoxville, 3 April - 13 May 1963, no. 23.

1970: Long-term loan to the Chevy Chase Club, Maryland, 1970-1978.

1984: The American Figure: Vanderlyn to Bellows, Mansfield Art Center, Ohio, 11 March - 8 April 1984, no. 30.

1987: Artists of Michigan in the Nineteenth Century: A Sesquicentennial Exhibition Commemorating Michigan Statehood 1837-1987, Muskegon Museum of Art, Michigan; Detroit Historical Museum, 1987.

1990: Gari Melchers: A Retrospective Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida; Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, Inc., Savannah; National Academy of Design, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1990-1991, no. 42, repro.

2002: Gilded Cage: Views of American Women, 1873–1921, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 13 July - 27 August 2002, unpublished checklist.

2003: The Impressionist Tradition in America, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 19 July 2003 - 18 October 2004, unpublished checklist.

2013: American Journeys: Visions of Place, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 2013 - 28 September 2014, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

1910: Mechlin, Leila. "Standard Kept Up: Third Biennial Exhibition of the Corcoran Gallery [exh. review]." Evening Star (10 December 1910): 6.

1998: Simmons, Linda, et al. The Forty-fifth Biennial: The Corcoran Collects, 1907-1998. Exh. cat. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1998: 110.

2011: Cash, Sarah, ed. Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Washington, 2011: 308, repro.