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Garber recreated the quarry's raw, craggy features adding an Impressionist play of light across its richly textured surface.

The quarries near the artist's home in Bucks County are an important theme in his work.

Born in Indiana, Garber became a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

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Daniel Garber

Quarry at Byram, about 1917

oil on canvas

52 ½ x 56 ½ in.

Gift of the Artist

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Daniel Garber was born in 1880 to a Mennonite farm family near North Manchester, Indiana. He eventually settled in Pennsylvania, where he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under William Merritt Chase. He was awarded a fellowship that allowed him to study in England, France and Italy. When he returned in 1909, he became a faculty member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he taught painting and drawing for the next 41 years and won numerous awards for his own work. Garber was known as one of the leaders of the Pennsylvania Impressionists, or the New Hope School, as the group was called. He depicted the quarries, woods and Delaware River Valley of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His home near Lumberville was not far from the great stone quarries at Byram, New Jersey, which he often painted. Like most Impressionists, Garber painted out of doors directly from nature. These patterned scenes were dominated by blues, greens and yellows

Quarry at Byram exemplifies Garber’s painting of these excavations. He recreates their raw, craggy surfaces with great deliberation, devoting his Impressionist sensibilities to the play of light across the glowing Pennsylvania soil. Garber infused the setting with his own lyrical approach to the American landscape, achieving a subtle balance between the cliff’s massive volume and its rich surface properties.

Reference

Brian H. Peterson.  Pennsylvania Impressionism, Philadelphia: James A Michener Art Museum and University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8122-3700-5.

Lance Humphries.  Daniel Garber: His Life and Work, New York. Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2006. N6537.G37 H86.