Daniel%20Garber (1880 - 1958) Works
Daniel Garber (1880 – 1958)
One of the two most important and, so far, the most valuable of the New Hope School painters, Daniel Garber, was born on April 11, 1880, in North Manchester, Indiana. At the age of 17, he studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati with Vincent Nowottny. After moving to Philadelphia in 1899, he attended classes at the Darby School, near Fort Washington, a summer school run by Pennsylvania Academy instructors Anshutz and Breckenridge. Later that year, he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His instructors at the Academy included Thomas Anshutz, William Merritt Chase, and Cecilia Beaux. While there, Garber met fellow artist Mary Franklin while she was posing as a model for the portrait class of Hugh Breckenridge. After a two year courtship, Garber married Mary Franklin on June 21, 1901.
In May 1905, Garber received the William Emlen Cresson Scholarship from the Pennsylvania Academy, financing two years of independent studies in England, Italy, and France. He frequently painted while in Europe, creating a powerful body of colorful impressionist landscapes depicting various rural villages and farm scenes, exhibiting several of these works in the Paris Salon.
Upon his return, Garber began teaching life and antique drawing classes at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women in 1907. That summer, Garber and family settled in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, a small town just north of New Hope. Their new home came to be known as “Cuttalossa,” named after the creek, which occupied part of the land. The family divided the year between Lumberville and Philadelphia at the Green Street townhouse, where he taught. Garber’s career took off as he began receiving a multitude of prestigious awards for his masterful Pennsylvania landscapes. During the fall of 1909, he was offered a position at the Pennsylvania Academy as an assistant to Thomas Anshutz. Garber became an important instructor at the Academy and taught there for 41 years.
Daniel Garber painted masterful landscapes depicting the Pennsylvania and New Jersey countryside surrounding New Hope. Unlike his contemporary, Edward Redfield, Garber painted with a delicate hand using a thin paint application technique. His paintings are filled with color and light, creating a feeling of endless depth. Along with Redfield, Garber painted large exhibition size canvases with the intent of winning medals and was extremely successful doing so. Although, he was also very adept at painting small gem-like paintings and a fine draftsman, producing a relatively large body of work on paper, mostly in charcoal and a rare few works in pastel. Another of Garber’s talents was etching. He created a series of approximately 50 different scenes, most of which run in editions of 50 or fewer etchings per plate.
Throughout his distinguished career, Daniel Garber earned some of the highest honors bestowed upon an American artist. Some of his accolades include the First Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy (1909); the Bronze Medal at the International Exposition in Buenos Aires (1910); the Walter Lippincott Prize from the Pennsylvania Academy (1911); the Potter Gold Medal at the Art Institute of Chicago (1911); the Second Clark Prize and the Silver Medal form the Corcoran Gallery of Art for “Wilderness” (1912); the Gold Medal from the Panama-Pacific Expositions in San Francisco (1915); the Second Altman Prize (1915); the Shaw prize (1916); the First Altman Prize (1917); the Edward Stotesbury Prize (1918); the Temple Gold Medal (1919); the First William A. Clark Prize (1921); the Gold Medal from the Philadelphia Art Club (1923); the Carnegie Institute Bronze Medal (1924); the Gold Medal of Honor (1929); the Jenny Sesnan Gold Medal (1937); the Pennell Medal (1942); and the Pennsylvania Academy Fellowship Award (1947), among many others.
Daniel Garber and Edward Redfield are known by most art enthusiasts as the two leading figures associated with the New Hope Art Colony. This is a correct assessment, but in the broader scope, their importance is equally paramount as key figures in 20th century American Art. As the Pennsylvania Impressionists, once considered a regional group, secure their place in history, painters like Garber and Redfield are destined to be considered true American Masters by the international art world.
Garber’s work is included in nearly 30 museum collections nationally and, this number continues to grow. He is also the first of the “New Hope School” painters to exceed the million-dollar mark at auction, which occurred in 2003.
Source: New Hope for American Art by James M. Alterman