Art History News: Daniel Garber at Auction

Biography - Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York

Daniel Garber was born in 1880 to a Mennonite family in North Manchester, Indiana. He began his formal studies at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1897. In 1899 he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and was taught by William Merritt Chase, a leading figure in the American Impressionist movement. Under the tutelage of Hugh Breckenridge and Thomas Anshutz, the young Garber experimented with his approach to painting outdoor scenes during the two summers he studied at the Darby Art School in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. Like many American artists working around the turn of the twentieth century, Garber traveled to Europe to complete his studies and was directly exposed to French Impressionism. After studying for two years in Europe, he returned to the United States in 1907 and settled with his wife Mary in Pennsylvania.

Garber set up a studio in the town of Lumberville, north of New Hope in Bucks County, a region that attracted many artists working in the American Impressionist landscape tradition. Garber joined the New Hope art colony and along with Edward Redfield, the first of the New Hope artists, established one of the top schools of academic Impressionism in the country. Garber rose to prominence as one of the most talented artists among them, earning critical praise for his paintings, mainly painted en plein air, of quarries, rivers, forests and fields around the Delaware River Valley. He was the most technically advanced of the Bucks County painters and certainly the most diverse in his subject matter. In addition to his outdoor scenes, Garber showed a remarkable ability in rendering figures, mainly his wife and children at their home in Lumberville. He also mastered a variety of media. In addition to his paintings, Garber made many drawings that are cohesive works in their own right and created a solid body of etchings.

Garber retained much of the style of the more traditional Impressionists such as J. Alden Weir, one of his chief influences; however, his paintings reflect a highly personal style. The treatment of his subjects varies from straightforward representation to a more imaginative handling of light and color. This effect has been described as decorative, a preference Garber shared with some of his contemporaries. Nevertheless, his overall body of work is characterized by a calmly poetic aura. The critic Homer St. Gaudens, whose views were generally reflective of broader public taste at the time, stated that “Garber does not paint a sugary picture, but a picture that is fortunate to contemplate.” It could be said that his paintings parallel the peaceful and meditative mood that pervaded the many years he spent living and working in the New Hope region.

Garber was a revered teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, a position he held from 1909-1950. He also took on the role of an instructor among the New Hope colony members. In both capacities he was committed to maintaining the highest standards of European and American Impressionism. Through his direct instruction, and the influence of his paintings themselves, Garber helped to form the distinctly American Pennsylvania Impressionist style.

Chronology

1880 Born in North Manchester, Indiana
1897 Attended Art Academy of Cincinnati (through 1898)
1899 Enrolled at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Attended Darby Summer
School, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania
1900 Awarded Fellowship Prize for “most gifted” summer school student
1904 Married Mary Franklin
1905 Awarded Academy’s Cresson Fellowship; Studied for two years in Europe
1907 Settled in Lumberville, Pennsylvania; Taught at the Philadelphia School of Design
for Women
1909 Won the Hallgarten First Prize at the Academy of Design exhibition; Began
teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, retired in 1950
1910 Began frequent exhibitions at Macbeth Gallery in New York
1911 Awarded Potter Palmer Gold Medal and prize of $1000
1913 Elected member of National Academy of Design
1915 Won gold medal at Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco
1916 Exhibited with New Hope Group at Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C,
the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and the
Cincinnati Art Museum
1919 Awarded Temple Gold Medal at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
1921 Awarded William A. Clark Prize of $2000 and Corcoran gold medal
1924 Received bronze medal from Carnegie Institute
1929 The Phillips Mill Community Association was founded to organize exhibitions of
Bucks County artists
1947 Elected member of the American Institute of Arts and Letters, New York.
1958 Died on July 5

Sotheby's 2014