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Lot Essay
Daniel Garber's poetic sensibility as a painter has always ranked him among the most celebrated artists of the New Hope School. His mastery of light and color, as well as his finely conceived compositions, combine with a true sensitivity to American subject matter. These qualities are evident in Reflections, one of Garber's most important canvases from the period of his career when he had achieved critical success as an Impressionist painter of the Pennsylvania landscape. Although he adopted the techniques of French Impressionism, Garber rejected the Impressionist idea of painting fleeting moments and transitory effects. His subject matter was structured on reality tempered by artistic license that was conservative and classical. In a 1922 interview Garber elaborated: "My work is different, perhaps, from that of the general landscape painter in that I have a mass of detail in the mass. After all, one's job is to get everything in and yet keep it all as a whole, like an orchestra--everything working in harmony to produce one feeling or emotion." (as quoted in L. Humphries, Daniel Garber Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 2006, p. 88)
In Reflections Garber composes a canvas that luxuriates in the high-keyed palette found in the area around the Delaware River. A master of color, Garber has blended brilliant hues of yellow, green and blue, creating a shimmering backdrop for a spring day. The surface of the river in the middle distance at first appears motionless, yet the subtle gradations of pink and lavender combine to establish a dense surface that enlivens the picture plane and adds layers of reflected light that evoke a sense of the passage of time.
Kathleen Foster has written, "Garber's dedication to outdoor study from the motif became the foundation of his method. His buggy and later his 'trusty light truck, canvases, easel and large palette strapped to the truck sides were familiar to folk up and down the valley.' As Garber roamed in search of material, fortified with peanut butter sandwiches, he would sometimes spend all day working outdoors, usually on the same canvas. Because he liked to work directly, without preparatory drawings, Garber needed the constant presence of the motif during most of the execution of the painting. After interviewing Garber, a journalist wrote in 1923, 'I want to paint things as I see them... and I don't see them in blotches... I have too much respect for the trees that I paint, and their true forms, to make something out of them that I do not feel exists in them.' With such commentary, Garber allied himself firmly with the realists of the early twentieth century..." (Daniel Garber, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1980, p. 27)
"Garber's idealizing sensibility always coexisted with his realist approach, and the unique effects produced by his balance of the two impulses had been detected in his paintings from the very beginning of his career. Commenting on one of Garber's windy landscapes of about 1904, a viewer praised its 'fidelity' and also remarked that 'Somehow it rested me more than anything else I have seen for a long time. He seems to have a high and true concept of the beautiful.' This search for the restful and the beautiful within the 'plain facts' of his own life motivated all of Garber's best work, and transformed his homeliest subjects 'into something serene and golden.'" (Daniel Garber, p. 30)
In Reflections Garber composes a canvas that luxuriates in the high-keyed palette found in the area around the Delaware River. A master of color, Garber has blended brilliant hues of yellow, green and blue, creating a shimmering backdrop for a spring day. The surface of the river in the middle distance at first appears motionless, yet the subtle gradations of pink and lavender combine to establish a dense surface that enlivens the picture plane and adds layers of reflected light that evoke a sense of the passage of time.
Kathleen Foster has written, "Garber's dedication to outdoor study from the motif became the foundation of his method. His buggy and later his 'trusty light truck, canvases, easel and large palette strapped to the truck sides were familiar to folk up and down the valley.' As Garber roamed in search of material, fortified with peanut butter sandwiches, he would sometimes spend all day working outdoors, usually on the same canvas. Because he liked to work directly, without preparatory drawings, Garber needed the constant presence of the motif during most of the execution of the painting. After interviewing Garber, a journalist wrote in 1923, 'I want to paint things as I see them... and I don't see them in blotches... I have too much respect for the trees that I paint, and their true forms, to make something out of them that I do not feel exists in them.' With such commentary, Garber allied himself firmly with the realists of the early twentieth century..." (Daniel Garber, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1980, p. 27)
"Garber's idealizing sensibility always coexisted with his realist approach, and the unique effects produced by his balance of the two impulses had been detected in his paintings from the very beginning of his career. Commenting on one of Garber's windy landscapes of about 1904, a viewer praised its 'fidelity' and also remarked that 'Somehow it rested me more than anything else I have seen for a long time. He seems to have a high and true concept of the beautiful.' This search for the restful and the beautiful within the 'plain facts' of his own life motivated all of Garber's best work, and transformed his homeliest subjects 'into something serene and golden.'" (Daniel Garber, p. 30)