American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists Featuring the Papageorge Family Collection

Exhibited

Macbeth Gallery, New York, New York, October 1925-January 1926.
Milch Galleries, New York, New York, January-June, 1926.
"Exhibition of Contemporary Art," Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey, May 12-27, 1928, unnumbered.
"Recent Paintings of Daniel Garber," Macbeth Gallery, New York, New York, March 9-28, 1931, no. 10.
"Exhibition of Paintings by Daniel Garber, N.A. and Edward W. Redfield, also Paintings by New Hope Artists," October 10-27, 1935, no. 12.
"American Landscape Art," Mount Holyoke Friends of Art, Dwight Art Memorial, South Hadley, Massachusetts (exhibition organized by Macbeth Gallery), April 1934, no. 18.
"One Hundred and Fortieth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture," Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 19-February 25, 1945, no. 105.
"Daniel Garber: Paintings, Drawings and Etchings and Charles Grafly: Sculpture," Newman Galleries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 29-February 28, 1965, no. 30.

Literature

Artist's Record Book I, p. 32, lines 25-30.
Letter from Robert W. Macbeth to Daniel Garber, October 10, 1925.
"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.
James M. Alterman, New Hope for American Art, Jim's of Lambertville, Lambertville, 2005, p. 176 (illustrated).
Lance Humphries, Daniel Garber: Catalogue Raisonné, Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, 2006. Vol. II, p. 185, P 501 (illustrated).

Note

During the 1920s, following the academic and critical success of his early decorative compositions, Garber turned to smaller works; which he increasingly started to link to locales near his cottage of Cuttalossa, next to Lumberville. The present work, which includes the specific location in its title, was executed in Lower Black Eddy, a village in Plumstead Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, now part of Point Pleasant. While this loyalty to Bucks County mattered for Garber and certainly counted among his peers, such names were vastly unknown to the New York crowd and foreign collectors, for whom only one thing mattered: each canvas presented a bucolic view of a secluded region, where decrepit buildings, rolling hills and the local inhabitants called for an apparent rustic and simpler way of life.

Lower Black Eddy presents a view of the titular village’s end. On each side of the road are buildings, a farm on the left judging from the covered haystack, and a series of houses on the right, marked by their turquoise shutters and lattice balconies. Apart from a subtle plume of smoke emerging from the chimney at right, and the anonymous figure walking on the path in the distance ahead of us, the village seems dormant, in complete accordance with the greater winter landscape, which Garber captures in two distinct tonalities, brown and orange in the foreground, and grey and purple in the background. While he is mostly revered for his spring and summer landscapes, Garber also had an affinity for winter, as the cold season made the rare touches of color even more intense, confessing: "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." Here, Garber positions the viewer in the middle of a sinuous dirt road, which meanders through the composition all the way through Byram, another preferred location of the artist. On the lefthand side, we notice tall pickets with a white base, which serve as visual aides to go deeper into the picture plane and to become a part of it.

A work such as Lower Black Eddy finds Garber at his best, and proves his talent at offering “intimate interpretations of homespun episodes in American landscape.” It also demonstrates his ability not only to depict the common places of his beloved Bucks County, but also to convey their charm, their inviting nature and homey atmosphere as if, through them, Garber was trying to convince his viewer to abandon city life and to move to the countryside.