Daniel Garber

Forest G. Pearson Jr., Philadelphia (acquired directly from the artist in 1957)

Thence by descent in 1970 to the present owner

Lance Humphries, Daniel Garber: Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, New York, 2006, no. P777, p. 271, illustrated

Although native to the Midwest, Daniel Garber relocated to Philadelphia in 1899 to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In choosing Pennsylvania over other artistic centers like New York and Boston, Garber was able to become one of the most prominent members of the state’s New Hope artist colony. Garber purchased a small cottage which he named “Cuttalossa” in Lumberville, Pennsylvania sometime between 1912 and 1915. Although the artist initially lived between the countryside and the city of Philadelphia while his children attended school, he permanently relocated to this cottage as soon as he was able. Describing his home in a letter to his cousin Charles, Garber wrote in 1929, “To know me now you would have to know the place… Everyone knows it’s half of me” (quoted in exh. cat., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Daniel Garber, 1880-1958, 1980, p. 24). 

Painted in 1941, Garber’s Lumberville shows the original Lumberville - Raven Rock Bridge spanning the Delaware River. Replaced in 1947 by a pedestrian suspension bridge, Garber illustrates a wood-covered steel truss bridge, constructed in 1856 and existing in multiple versions through various natural disasters before eventually being declared unsafe in 1944. The present work was acquired directly from the artist in the 1950s, and has since remained in the same private family collection.