Daniel Garber: Early Influences

"Up the River" by Daniel Garber

"The Frank Duveneck circle must have led Daniel Garber to another Cincinnati painter, John Twachtman, and his close friend, Julian Alden Weir. The lone indication of Garber's early enthusiasm for Weir comes from the testimony of Mrs. Garber, who remarked to her daughter that Garber briefly took on the name 'Julian' Daniel Garber in homage to Weir. His high school graduation photograph was autographed flamboyantly with 'J's' worked into both his own initials, and he enrolled at the Cincinnati Art Academy as 'J. Daniel Garber.' As late as 1900 he was still signing designs with this name. Like Duveneck, Weir has frequently been cited as one of Garber's teachers, though there is no evidence of a contact at this early date, and his influence cannot be clearly read in Garber's paintings until about 1905.

Wier, his friend Twachtman, and a loose group of painters known as the American Impressionists had recently withdrawn from the Society of American Artists in order to form 'The Ten.' Some of the paintings shown at the group's first exhibition in New York that spring were sent on to the Cincinnati Annual of 1898. Works by Childe Hassam, Edmund Tarbell, Benson and De Camp could be seen in Cincinnati, and collectively they created a model for the young Garber, who carried the aesthetics of 'The Ten' info the middle of the twentieth century.

The power of these New York and Boston painters drew Garber away from Cincinnati in 1899, perhaps because he decided that it was necessary to move east to establish his career. With the exception of Duveneck and his student T.C. Steele, who was building a small art colony in southern Indiana, few local painters of an Impressionist stamp chose to stay behind, and those who remained had usually enjoyed a period of travel and training on the East Coast or in Europe. Philadelphia was Daniel's choice to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts."

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.)