The Michener and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts have teamed up for an exhibition on Pennsylvania Impressionist Daniel Garber.
By: Jillian Kalonick
Though he was born outside of North Manchester, Ind., Pennsylvania Impressionist painter Daniel Garber (1880-1958) was inextricably linked to Cuttalossa, his Lumberville, Pa., home. A native of a small farming community that was, according to him, "hideous rather than merely ugly," he set up home in the bucolic Bucks County countryside in 1907, after taking over the property from his father-in-law.
"Home was a very important part of him," says his granddaughter Dana Applestein in a short film about Garber that is on view in the gallery hosting Daniel Garber: Romantic Realist at the Michener Museum in Doylestown, Pa. "It spoke about how he saw his world and the way his paintings were done. It was as though the house grew right out of the ground as though it had not been built by human hands."
In fact, Garber frequently set paintings in his home, surrounding property and studio, and rarely painted outside of eastern Pennsylvania. Daniel Garber: Romantic Realist, on view at the Michener through May 6 and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia through April 8, includes nearly 170 paintings and works on paper by the artist.
The PAFA exhibition examines Garber’s works from 1901-1929, while the Michener focuses on art created from 1920-1955. Daniel Garber: Romantic Realist is curated by Dr. Lance Humphries, author of the Daniel Garber catalog raisonné, and organized by Lynn Marsden-Atlass, senior curator at PAFA, and Brian Peterson, senior curator at the Michener. It is the first major exhibition of Garber’s work since a retrospective at PAFA in 1945, and works have been lent by institutions across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian, as well as more than 20 private collectors.
Garber first studied art at the Cincinnati Art Academy, then PAFA, where he earned a Cresson scholarship and he and his wife, Mary, traveled through Europe from 1905 to 1907. In 1909 he became a member of the faculty at PAFA and lived on Green Street in Philadelphia during the school year while spending summers at Cuttalossa, which he eventually made his permanent home.
When Garber died in 1958 after falling off a ladder while trimming vines at Cuttalossa his works had been included in nearly 750 exhibitions. Extremely prolific, he was also known to do away with works with which he was not satisfied, even if they had been praised by critics and frequently exhibited. It is estimated he destroyed nearly a fifth of his total production.
Besides the country landscapes typical of Pennsylvania Impressionists, Garber is well-known for the paintings he did of his family his wife, Mary, daughter, Tanis, and son, John as well as fellow artists and students at PAFA, where he taught for 41 years. Along with Bucks County landscapes, several striking paintings of his family are included in the PAFA exhibition.
"The Studio Wall" (1914) is one of several paintings of Mary, this one at his light-filled workspace at Cuttalossa. Mary stands in profile, holding a vase and wearing a pink silk kimono. Mary’s dress, as well as the diagonal lines of light flowing through the studio window, suggests the influence of Oriental art.
"Tanis" (1915), which took at least three months for Garber to complete, depicts the artist’s daughter at his open studio door, the light flooding in and illuminating her dress, the door frame, the surrounding foliage, her golden hair and even her bare feet. Garber painted his daughter both posing and in the middle of reading or knitting, and captured Mary while she was mending, at repose, or, in "Gathering Grapes" (1909), wearing a blue kimono-like robe in the garden and filling a basket with bright purple orbs.
In a rare self-portrait, painted in 1911, Garber appears a bit stiff and wary, wearing a green-blue tie, tan pants and a blue-gray blazer, hair askew. In the previous year, Garber’s son, John, was born, and Garber launched his career with the sale of the painting "The Hills of Byram" (1909) to the Art Institute of Chicago.
Personal effects such as correspondence, personal photos, Garber’s tools and his printing press are on view at PAFA, fitting since he was a part of the institution for more than four decades. Revered by his students, he was respected for his consistent style and skill; an ode to him penned on the men’s room wall before he retired read "Barns are painted by fools like me, but only Garber can paint a tree."
Many of the works on view at the Michener exhibition feature frames made by Bucks County framemakers Bernard Badura and Frederick Harer; one painting, "Snow at Harer’s" (1938), depicts the approach to the framemaker’s home. Harer began crafting frames for Garber in the 1910s.
Garber seemed to relax his technique a bit in later paintings; in "Late Snow Byram" (1938), the raw, unpainted canvas is visible. In "Down Through Carversville" (1948), pencil sketches are visible "perhaps as an affirmation that he was committed to the necessity and validity of good draughtsmanship," the accompanying text reads.
The artist also often revisited paintings, adding or deleting figures or landscape features. For "Glen Road," painted circa 1932, he reworked the painting a decade later to remove a tree and a horse. In 1938, he returned to "Spring Panel" (1931-32), a riverside landscape scene, to include a figure sowing soil by the waterside an addition that added the human element he strove for in many later paintings.
Garber developed an interest in etchings later in life, and 56 formal etchings are on view at the Michener; many were purchased by collectors who could not afford to buy his paintings. Also on view is the illustration he did for a cookbook for the Women’s Auxiliary of Trinity Chapel in Solebury, Pa. (circa 1950); copies of the cookbook, which also features contributions by Pearl Buck, James Michener and George Nakashima, are for sale in the gift shop.
As spring approaches, perhaps the best way to experience Daniel Garber: Romantic Realist is to see it after taking the suggested driving tour of river towns that inspired the artist, available on the Michener Web site. The tour highlights scenes and settings of specific paintings, including "Mary’s Cottage" in Cottageville, Pa., "Snow at Harer’s" in Uhlerstown, Pa., and several works in Point Pleasant, Pa. The scenery might not look quite as it did in Garber’s day, but the artist’s works often edited out human progress even then; his first painting with the artists’ hub New Hope in its title didn’t appear until 1930, and though he did several paintings of the town of Lambertville, his perspectives were from a distance.
Daniel Garber: Romantic Realist is on view at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts, 118 N. Broad St., Phila., through April 8, and at the Michener Museum, 138
S. Pine St., Doylestown, Pa., through May 6. Combined tickets for both museums
cost $18, $12 students, $8 children, members free; individual tickets cost $12,
$8 students, $6 students, members free. Special events include a five-part lecture
series at the Michener, March 6, 13, 20, 27 and April 3; Art at Lunch lectures
March 7 and April 4 at PAFA; Family Workshops at PAFA, March 3 and 10; and a tour
of the Garber studio at Cuttalossa, April 20. PAFA hours: Tues.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5
p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Michener hours: Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Sat. 10
a.m.-5 p.m., Sun. noon-5 p.m. For PAFA information, call (215) 972-7600. On the
Web: www.pafa.org. For
Michener information, call (215) 340-9800. On the Web: www.michenermuseum.org