Daniel Garber: Teaching at Chester Springs

"South Room - Green Street," 1920 by Daniel Garber

"In the summertime Daniel Garber taught at Chester Springs, where he supervised one night class and then spent the following day teaching life or portrait classes and visiting the landscape painters as they worked outdoors. He made no attempt to promote his own style, insisting only on the fundamentals of technique and good habits of observation. Outdoors he was more likely to teach by demonstration than by correction, and his commentaries remained brief and vague. 

'See the light,' was his favorite expression. 'I learned from his painting, not his person,' remember one student. 'I was never close to him, but I learned more about color from Garber than any other Impressionist. For him, lessons of color mixture, layered and scumbled paint application, and the delicate observation of atmosphere, all could be learned at the the Academy annuals, or in the demonstrations Garber would give at Chester Springs.

His granddaughter, who seems to have received no special dispensation as a relative, remembers only his silent inspection, the quick corrections on the drawing itself, and the appearance of a new sheet of charcoal paper. 'Do it again,' Garber would say and leave the studio. Several hours later, as she waited 'clammy and damp' with hopeful pride and apprehension, he would return, and the scene would be replayed. After twelve or fifteen discouraging repetitions, Garber took her drawing off the drawing board and saved it. Still savoring this triumph, she adds, 'Boy, did I learn!'

Her first painting experiences were equally straightforward. After she had carefully matched a blade of grass to her palette color, and duly painted the entire scene in the same green, Garber came around and with a simple, 'No, no' proceeded to scrape out all her work. Without a word, he mixed a yellow-grey on his palette and place a few touches in the distant zones of her composition, and showed her how 'green' it really looked. Subsequently, he would take her driving with him and interrogate her about the landscape. 'Look, what color do you see?' he would ask point to the road or the trees."

To be continued

(Excerpts from Daniel Garber, 1880-1958: Exhibition, June 27 - August 24, 1980, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts" by Kathleen Foster.)