DANIEL GARBER | Fields in Jersey

The artist
William Macbeth Gallery, New York, 1909 (acquired from the above)
John F. Braun, Merion, Pennsylvania, circa 1913 (acquired from the above)
[With]Robert Carlen, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1977
Janet Fleisher Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1977 (sold: Sotheby's, New York, October 25, 1979, lot 167)
The Warner Collection of Gulf States Paper Corporation, Tuscaloosa, Alabama (acquired at the above sale)
[With]Spanierman Gallery, New York, 1994
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1994

New York, William Macbeth Gallery, Paintings by American Artists, n.d.
Boston, Massachusetts, St. Botolph Club, Sculpture by Charles Grafly and Paintings by Daniel Garber, February 1911, no. 30
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Exhibition of Paintings and Etchings by Daniel Garber, October-November 1924, no. 5

Artist's Record Book, vol. I, p. 9; vol. II, no. 209, p. 70; vol. III, p. 37
John Nutting, "Joint Exhibition in the St. Botolph Club: Sculpture of Charles Grafly and Paintings of Daniel Garber Combine to Make an Interesting Collection," Advertiser, Boston, Massachusetts, 1911, SB I, 122, pp. 2-3
William Macbeth Gallery, Biographical Notes, New York, circa 1914, illustrated p. 38
Lorinda Munson Bryant, American Pictures and Their Painters, New York, 1917, illustrated fig. 188, opp. p. 238
Joseph S. Czestochowski, The American Landscape Tradition: A Study and Gallery of Paintings, New York, 1982, p. 139, illustrated
Lance Humphries, Daniel Garber: Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, New York, 2006, pp. 44-46, 49, 73, 94, illustrated p. 45; vol. II, no. P 263, pp. 84-85, 92, illustrated p. 84

The canvas is strip-lined and there is frame abrasion along the extreme edges. Under UV: there is minor inpainting to address frame abrasion along some edges and a pindot to address paint loss in the riverbank in the lower center.
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Painted in August 1909, Fields in Jersey is a pivotal antecedent to the development of Daniel Garber’s mature artistic style. In a select group of works from the summer of 1909, Garber began to explore innovative compositions noted for their limited color palette and richly patterned design. In the present work, the artist positions the viewer on the Pennsylvania banks of the Delaware River at Lumberville looking across to the rolling New Jersey countryside. Here, Garber offers a glimpse of an Edenic pastoral landscape partially revealed through a lattice network of leafy trees and tangled vines. Describing the purpose of this complex visual perspective, the scholar Lance Humphries suggests: “Perhaps the viewer is not intended to enter the Garden of Eden, only use it as an ideal by which to measure the world” (Daniel Garber: Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, New York, 2006, p. 73). Of Fields in Jersey, Humphries continues: “While undeniably a view, this type of landscape is less about the view and more about the surface of the canvas, for in bringing the trees to the immediate foreground Garber became less interested in realizing them in three-dimensional space, allowing the trees to become flattened patterns. These trees do occupy space, but only a very thin slice of it...These leaves coupled with a generally denser and darker surround contribute to the sense that the foreground is a protected shaded spot that halts the viewer’s gaze for a moment before penetrating this darkness to the sunny beyond. The eye stops at the surface, resting on the enormous details Garber included in the leaves of the trees and vines—nearly every leaf is rendered, if only quickly. This type of composition and surface treatment is, in the words of at least one later critic, ‘very Garberesque’” (Ibid., p. 45).