Gari Melchers was one of the most celebrated American painters of his generation — winner of the Grand Prix at the 1889 Paris Exposition, friend of Rodin and Whistler, and a portraitist who counted Theodore Roosevelt among his subjects. His home and studio at Belmont, a few miles north of Fredericksburg, has been preserved essentially as he left it at his death in 1932, and it now operates as a state historic site and gallery.
The estate is genuinely lovely: a stone manor house built in the late 18th century, set in formal gardens that run down to the Rappahannock. The studio is particularly atmospheric — skylights, worn floorboards, and canvases stacked against the walls — and the house retains much of the furniture and personal collection that Melchers and his wife Corinne assembled over decades of international travel. The gallery holds a substantial collection of his paintings, which range from genre scenes of Dutch peasant life to portraits of American industrialists. Somewhat overlooked by visitors focused on the Civil War sites, which makes it all the more worth seeking out.