"Bringing the Museum to You"

The Cyber Art Show continues our study of American landscape painters in the Public Domain with the third of three 12-piece Exhibitions of works by Daniel Garber (1880–1958), an important figure in the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania.

 

Born in North Manchester, Indiana, Garber’s formal study began when he was 16, at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. In the summers of 1899 and 1900 Daniel took classes in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, at the Darby School of Painting, where he studied under Hugh Breckenridge and Thomas Anshutz. He opened a studio in Philadelphia in 1901, working as a portraitist and commercial artist.

 

From 1899 to 1905 he continued his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. During these years, he met and married Mary Franklin, a fellow art student. After winning The Cresson Traveling Scholarship, a Pennsylvania Academy award, the couple traveled to Europe, where Garber continued his art education in Italy, England and France for two years. Influenced by the French Impressionists, especially Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet, Garber began to paint en plein landscapes. His signature style took shape, a combination of pastels and bright colors, fantasy and realism.

 

After returning to the states in 1907, the couple moved to Cuttalossa, six miles up the Delaware River from New Hope, Pennsylvania.

 

In 1904 Garber became a member of the faculty at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women. In 1909 he began a career of teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts that lasted forty-one years.  Garber would retire in 1950 as one of the Academy's most admired and respected teachers.

 

He was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1913 and achieved notoriety through numerous exhibitions and awards, including a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition  in San Francisco in 1915.

 

Today, Garber’s paintings are found at major museums including the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Allentown Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.