Daniel Garber: Cincinnati Academy of Art

"Students of Painting" by Daniel Garber

"Daniel Garber's father encouraged the artist spirit within his son. After the family moved into the town of North Manchester, his father gave him the run of a small building in back of the house, where he set up his first studio. By the time he was sixteen he was anxious to pursue professional training. To Garber's surprise his father decided to let him leave, mostly because of the counsel of a respected local elder. 'If you don't, you'll lose him,' advised this friend, who was wise enough to measure correctly the determination of the young Garber.

Being freed, he was not lost to the family, but retained affectionate ties, even though he was the only one of eleven children to leave the area. With a small inheritance from his mother, he headed south to the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where he joined the summer classes of 1897. For two years, beginning in the fall of that year, he attended both day and evening classes in Life Drawing or Illustration. His daughter recalled the response of his jealous and slightly incredulous older brothers: 'There's Dan, down in Cincinnati, doin' them obscene drawings,' they would say, but the family soon learned to be proud of his success. In May of 1898 Garber won his first award, a 'Home Scholarship.'

Lost to the Indiana farming community, but found by the cosmopolitan Cincinnati art world, Garber fell into the circles of Frank Duveneck, the American Impressionists, and the sophisticated, European-trained faculty of the Art Academy. At that time the principal teachers were Vincent Nowottny, who supervised life drawing; Otto Walter Beck, who taught his evening illustration class; and Lewis Henry Meakin, who was respected locally as the 'father' of the regional landscape school. Meakin must have encouraged Garber's plein air method, and promoted a palette with stronger contrasts than the newer Impressionist manner."

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.)