Julius Garibaldi Melchers (August 11, 1860 - November 30, 1932) was an American artist. He was one of the leading American proponents of naturalism. He won a 1932 Gold medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He became a member of the National Academy of Design, New York; the Royal Academy of Berlin; Société Nationale des Beaux Arts, Paris; International Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, London, and the Secession Society, Munich; and, besides receiving a number of medals, his decorations include the Legion of Honor, France; the order of the Red Eagle, Germany; and knight of the Order of St Michael, Bavaria. In 1889, he and John Singer Sargent became the first American painters to win a Grand Prize at the Paris Universal Exposition. His paintings from the World Columbian Exposition (1893) held in Chicago are now in the Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
In 1904 he was named an Officer in the French Legion of Honor.[5] In 1909 he was appointed Professor of Art at the Grand Ducal Saxony School of Art in Weimar, Germany. In 1915 he returned to New York City to open a studio at Abraham Archibald Anderson's Bryant Park Studios building. From 1920 to 1928 he served as the president of the New Society of Artists. He spent his final years at Belmont Estate in Falmouth, Virginia, near Fredericksburg. He died on November 30, 1932 in Falmouth, Virginia, at his 27 acre estate known as "Belmont".