Daniel Garber (American, 1880-1958) - Ferry Road

Signed ‘Daniel Garber’ bottom center left, oil on canvas
28 x 30 in. (71.1 x 76.2cm)
Executed circa 1926-1927.
Housed in its original Frederick Harer frame. 

Provenance

The Artist.
Collection of Minnie Antoinette Moore (Mrs. Joseph Fithian) Tatem, East Haddonfield, New Jersey. 
By descent to her daughter, Mrs. Mary Tatem, circa late 1940s.
By descent to the Estate of Ernest B. Brigham, Maine, 1987. 
Acquired directly from the above.
Private Collection, Main Line, Pennsylvania.

Exhibition

“One Hundred and Twenty-Second Annual Exhibition," Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 30-March 20, 1927, no. 308.

Literature

Artist's Record Book I, p. 36, lines 7-12.
“Artist Turned Down Europe to Paint Delaware Valley: Beauty too Abundant to Paint Shabbiness Says Daniel Garber,” in Sunday Times-Advertiser, Trenton, New Jersey, November 28, 1948.
Lance Humphries, Daniel Garber: Catalogue Raisonné, Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, 2006. Vol. II, p. 191, P 518 (illustrated)

Lot Essay

The Lot will be accompanied by an original letter dated October 4, 1940 by Daniel Garber to Mrs. Tatum, the first owner of the work, as well as the original receipt, and bill of sale from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' 1927 selling exhibition. 

While Edward Redfield, Charles Rosen and Fern Coppedge all enjoyed depicting the countryside blanketed in the snow (in fact winter landscapes are by far the most common subject among the Bucks County painters), Daniel Garber developed a taste for glowing landscapes set in the spring, summer or fall. As such, his winter scenes are considered rare. However, on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at Macbeth Gallery in 1931, the accompanying catalogue noted that Garber felt “that the earth forms are very handsome in late autumn and winter; when the anatomy of the ground is so defined in beautifully toned planes of dead grass, exposed stone, and handsome lines and curves of the turf." 

One such example of this seasonal predisposition is Ferry Road, a canvas painted en plein air from a hill at Point Pleasant, which offers a steep view of the Valley of Tinicum Creek where a seemingly deserted and isolated house overlooks a stone quarry on the other side of the icy-blue Delaware River. The present work is one of the earliest winter landscapes Garber ever painted. It is also the first of a series of several canvases in which the artist adopts this particular viewpoint–"the finest achievement of his career" according to Kathleen Foster. He would return to a nearby site in the similarly composed Sumac Lane and Ferry Road - Springtime.

Although seemingly simple in its composition, Ferry Road relies on a sophisticated arrangements of shapes, lines and patterns. While the tracks on the snowy road invite our eye into the composition, which the verticals of the surrounding trees and house frame, the horizontal river and quarries ultimately block our progression into the picture plane, and force us to go up, which accentuates the layering effect of the painting–Daniel's typical ‘tapestry' device. The result is a very solid and stately image whose muted palette (made of creams, soft grays, lavenders, blues and soft pinks) accentuates its overall unity and harmony.