Gari Melchers: Sunday Mass

“In the present lot the influence of the Hague School has disappeared. Instead the fresh green, red and purple colours show impressionistic influences. The painting shows the interior of a church, possibly the Reformed Church of Egmond-Binnen. The attention given by Melchers to depicting the different figures demonstrates Melchers’ qualities as a storyteller. Not only their faces, but also their poses are carefully depicted. Their traditional Dutch clothes, of which Melchers owned a large collection from all over Holland, are also shown to the smallest detail. In this painting he combined the regional Veluwe cap with a North Holland dress on the center figure and placed a worshipper in typical Egmond headdress next to her. Like the famous Dutch flower painters who mixed winter, spring and summer blossoms in one picture, Melchers…