GARI MELCHERS (AMERICAN 1860-1932), OIL ON CANVAS, 1905, H 49", W 36", EDWARD ALGER AGE FOUR:GARI MELCHERS OIL ON CANVAS, EDWARD ALGER AS A YOUNG MAN 1905. Signed lower left. Melchers 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. Edward Alger was the son of Frederick Alger. Frederick Alger, the son of Russell A. Alger, graduated from Harvard in 1899, served as a lieutenant colonel with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in France during the First World War and was awarded the French Legion of Honor. His son, Russell A. Alger, Jr., was instrumental in persuading the Packard Motor Car Company to move to Michigan from Ohio; he also built in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a palatial Italian Renaissance style estate, "The Moorings", which was donated in 1949 and became the Grosse Pointe War Memorial, honoring veterans of World War II. (Source Wikipedia).