American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists

Housed in a Bernard Badura frame.

Provenance:

The Artist.

Estate of the Artist, 1958.

Collection of Mary Franklin Garber, the Artist's wife, by 1968.

Estate of Mary Franklin Garber, the Artist's wife, 1968.

Collection of Tanis Garber Page, the Artist's daughter, December 1976.

By descent to the present owner, a descendant of the Artist, Atlanta, Georgia, since 1980.

Exhibited:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, "One-Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Annual Exhibition," January 29 - March 19, 1933, no. 244.

(Possibly) New Hope, New Hope Art Associates, "Artist of the Month: Daniel Garber, N.A.," May 1940.

Athens, Georgia Museum of Art, "American Impressionism in Georgia Collections," September 11 - November 14, 1993 (traveling to St. Petersburg, Museum of Fine Arts, December 5, 1993 - March 6, 1994 and Charlotte, Mint Museum of Art, April 16 - June 19, 1994).

Literature:

Artist's Record Book I, p. 48, lines 19-23.

Letter from Wilbur D. Peat to Daniel Garber, Indianapolis, October 8, 1956.

Lance Humphries, Daniel Garber: Catalogue Raisonné, Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, 2006, Vol. I, pp. 162-163 (discussed) and Vol. II, p. 229, P 619 (illustrated).

Lot Note:

Although in the 1930s, Daniel Garber turned his back to the very large decorative oils he would produce during the 1910s, he remained interested in the formal arrangement of his landscape paintings, more so than the narrative. The present work, a complex network of trees and branches which obstruct the viewer’s view, is representative of the artist’s reverence for highly structured compositions. Similar to earlier works such as Glen Cuttalossa (Freeman’s, Sale of March 3, 2014, Lot 61) as it features a series of slender, bare trees across the picture plane, In a Wood goes further as the trees are not placed on the same place, but rather populate the entirety of the composition. Here, not only do they spread across the foreground of the canvas, they also recede into the faraway picture plane, hereby creating “the liveliest rhythm of tree forms in this series” according to Lance Humphries.

Contrary to earlier works, In a Wood refuses the viewer a vanishing point and in fact negates a visible horizon. Rather, it encloses the viewer in a closed-off forest. The sky is cropped, and our eyes wander rest-free in this cage-like pattern of strong vertical lines created by the tree trunks. No strong horizontals are here to break the omnipresent verticality: even the stream in the center of the composition, stretches into the horizon rather than across the canvas. This feeling is enhanced by the shadows the same trees cast, but also (and especially) by the overall color integrity, a very homogeneous palette of deep reds, oranges and browns which give the painting its unity. Subtle touches of turquoise and lavender help counter the oppression, and alievate our anxiety as they contribute to make of the forest a warm place of retreat, soothing in its apparent simplicity yet infinitely complex in its tree arrangements: a feeling which echoes Garber’s own strong feelings towards nature.

This type of composition is, of course, emblematic of Garber’s mature work, and very much responsible for the famous “tapestry” effect that Garber used to make his landscapes more intimate, but also more painterly formal, abstract almost. In a way, one can view such landscapes as Garber’s response to Modern Art, which he experiences through his draughtsmanship, in the purest respect of the academic tradition.