I subscribe to the theory of six points of separation, the idea that each person is connected to anyone else in the world by no more than six other intermediaries, at least where Gari Melchers is concerned.  If I had a dollar for every time someone tol …

  I love this late 1920s candid shot of Gari Melchers posing with his masterpiece The Smithy. The identity of the exhibition and hosting institution is unclear, but it sure does look like something has caught the master’s undivided attention. Do y …

Long before the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. finally closed its doors in 2014 it was already divesting itself of paintings. One important example which had come to them through the renowned collector Duncan Phillips was The Smithy, painted around 1898 by Gari Melchers.

  The 1890s saw the rise of the commercial music industry in the United States.  Sales of sheet music skyrocketed, enabling everyday music lovers to play and sing songs in their own parlors. The song that touched off the sheet music craze was Char …

Recently docent Trudy Hardcastle escorted a native Dutchwoman through Belmont who shared interesting information about George Hitchcock’s painting in the hall, The Annunciation.  She explained that the head ornaments on the Madonna are pictorial “code” …

Back in 2014 I wrote about all the images in our collection that pictured Gari Melchers and the artists who created them. The identity of one in particular, who sketched a funny caricature of a dapper Gari Melchers, remained elusive until today, when I …

Dutch Bachelor at His Breakfast I’m delighted to provide an update to my earlier post Another Conundrum of Connoisseurship! regarding a painting, Dutch Bachelor at His Breakfast, sent to me for inspection this past June.  An art collector sent me a wat …

UPDATE:  “Puzzler of a Painting no More” Recently a gentleman from the Netherlands asked me to look at an untitled watercolor he purchased from a gallery in Maine.  Clearly the subject of the painting is Dutch.  In a humble kitchen interior a costumed …

“…the vision of a flourishing rose outside his own backdoor proved impossible to resist.”

“Back in the day” Belmont in September was a lively place, lively in the sense of human activity as well as the emerging splendor of autumn.   According to Corinne Melchers’ diary of the 1920s, the flurry of harvest time labors included canning tomatoe …