American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Housed in a signed Frederick Harer frame.

Provenance:

The Artist.

Collection of Lidie McFarland Anderson, Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, 1929.

To her daughter, Mary Corona Anderson Machemer, 1944.

By descent in the family.

Private Collection, North Carolina.

Exhibited:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, "124th Annual Exhibition," January 27 – March 17, 1929, no. 42.

Literature:

Artist's Record Book I, p. 40, lines 7-12.

Lance Humphries, Daniel Garber: Catalogue Raisonné, volume II, Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2006, p. 202, P 547, illustrated.

Lot Note:

Sumac Lane is characteristic of the paintings Daniel Garber produced in the late 1920s, when he frequently depicted small dwellings, secluded paths, and modest towns gently enfolded by the natural world. Painted in December 1928 from the top of the hill at Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania, the scene overlooks the quarries on the distant shore of the Delaware River. It is the second in a series of at least three paintings (including Ferry Road, cat. no. 518) that feature the same solitary “warm grey house” looking down Sumac Lane, and belongs to one of the earliest groups that Kathleen Foster has described as forming “the finest achievement of his career.”

The composition is intentionally understated: the soft horizontal strata of the quarry in the distance are set against the elegant vertical sweep of the bare tree in the foreground, creating a subtle tension between stability and movement. The house sits quietly among winter grasses and sumac, its snow-capped roof catching the pale seasonal light. Garber revisited this site later in his career, most notably in the winter of 1930, adding a bare tree at the far end of the house and illustrating the compositional liberties he was willing to take in shaping his landscapes.

When exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1929, paintings of this homespun simplicity resonated with audiences eager to define American art in plain, unpretentious terms. Through his meticulous study of winter light and the rugged contours of the Bucks County terrain, Garber elevates an ordinary hillside dwelling into a vision of serenity and quiet majesty. As Sam Hunter observed, and as Sumac Lane so beautifully demonstrates, Garber (much like George Inness before him) was able to draw “from the spectacle of nature an elevating and ennobling experience, in a somewhat melancholy, elegiac mood.”