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.

  Pipevine swallowtail on Monarda The Pipevine Swallowtail, Battus philenor, is a beautiful butterfly that has an upper surface of iridescent blue or blue-green on its hind-wing.  The underside of the hind-wing has a row of 7 round orange spots in …

Visitors who venture up the sidewalk from Falmouth to Belmont find themselves entering our property at the corner of Ingleside Drive and Washington Street, next to the wildlife habitat field in front of the main house. Standing at this vantage point on …

Ever since reading this article in UVAToday, I’ve been determined to offer full scale 3-D printed replicas at Gari Melchers Home and Studio. And, this week, it became a reality!

  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” …

Dr. Robert E. Weems, a retired research geologist with the United States Geological Survey, returned to Belmont in October to make four molds of some of the prints he discovered during a visit to Belmont during the summer of 2015. The prints he selecte …

This article originally appeared in the March 2016 Stafford County Historical Society newsletter and is shared here on our blog with the author’s permission. The Falmouth Bridge is of particular interest to us because Joseph B. Ficklen owned Belmont. A …

Very often visitors to Belmont will see the many Gari Melchers self-portraits and paintings of him by other artists, as well as historical photographs, and ask us whether he painted with his left or right hand. For many artists of earlier generations, …