After three years he went to Paris, where he worked at the Académie Julian, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where he studied under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger.

[4] 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 Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, 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.

His mural paintings from the World Columbian Exposition (1893) held in Chicago are now in the Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

[6] In 1903, he married Corinne Lawton Mackall, a Baltimore painter born in 1880, who studied at the Maryland Institute Practical School for the Mechanic Arts and at the Académie Colarossi.

[12] Throughout his career, whether abroad or in his commercial headquarters in New York City or his country retreat at Belmont in Falmouth, Virginia, the artist maintained a fascination with northern light.

[4] Besides portraits, his chief works are: The Supper at Emmaus, in the Krupp collection at Essen; The Family, National Gallery, Berlin; Mother and Child, Luxembourg; and the decoration, at the Library of Congress, Washington, Peace and War.

He subsequently was commissioned to paint four murals of notable Missourians (Eugene Field, Mark Twain, Major James Rollins, and Susan Blow) for the Governor's office in the Missouri State Capitol.

[19] The 18th-century Belmont estate was the country home and studio of prominent portraitist, muralist, and American Impressionist painter Gari Melchers (1860-1932).