Gari Melchers
Detroit-born and Paris-honored, he painted the city's history onto the walls of its public library.
Melchers was born in Detroit in 1860 and left at 17 to study at the Düsseldorf Academy, then at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1884 he co-founded an art colony at Egmond aan Zee in the Netherlands with George Hitchcock.
In 1889 he and John Singer Sargent became the first American painters to win a Grand Prize at the Paris Universal Exposition. He was a leading American voice for naturalism, and later received the French Legion of Honor.
He came back to his hometown in paint in 1921 with three murals on Detroit's history for the Detroit Public Library. His former home, Belmont in Virginia, is now a museum holding the largest collection of his work.