Molly Woods (Mrs. John R.) Hare, Langhorne, Pennsylvania (acquired directly from the artist)
Edward L. Johnstone, Princeton, New Jersey, 1956 (bequeathed from the above)
Private collection, 1976 (his wife)
By descent in the family to the present owner

New Hope, Pennsylvania, Phillips Mill Community Association, 1940
New Hope, Pennsylvania, New Hope Art Associates, Artist of the Month: Daniel Garber, N.A., May 1940
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, American Impressionism: The New Hope Circle, December 1984-January 1985

Artist's Record Book I, p. 60
"Artist of the Month, New Hope Art Associates: Daniel Garber, N.A.," Towpath, vol. I, no. 6, June 1940, p. 13, illustrated (as Country Church)
Hollis Taggart Galleries with Lance Humphries, Daniel Garber Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, New York, 2006, no. P717, p. 255, illustrated

Very good original condition; unlined; under UV: fine.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Indiana native Daniel Garber studied a𒀰t the Cincinnati Art Academy as a teenager and later under Thomas Anshutz and Hugh Breckenridge at the Darby School of Painting, in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. The Darby curriculum encouraged students to paint the local landscape, working outdoors rather than in a studio. Between 1899 and 1905, Garber continued his studies at Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, worked as an illustrator and portrait painter, and began his teaching career at the Philadelphia School of Design for♋ Women. Garber's skill was recognized by the Pennsylvania Academy with the award of a scholarship to study in Europe for two years. From 1905 through 1907, Garber visited England, Italy, and France accompanied by his wife Mary "May" Franklin, a former art student. Upon the Garbers' return to the United States they purchased a farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia, while retaining a winter residence in the city. Two years later, Garber began his forty-year career as an influential teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The family initially divided their time equally between the two locations, residing six months of the year in each, but by 1915 Garber was spending several nights a week in the farmhouse on the Cuttalossa Creek near Lumberville. For five decades, the Garber home, known simply as "Cuttalossa," served as the base from which the artist painted numerous images of the Delaware River Valley; these paintings established his reputation as a leading figure within the artists' community that flourished in Bucks County during the early decades of the twentieth century.

In Stockton Church, painted in the fall of 1939, Garber depicts the Berean Baptist Church across the Delaware River in Stockton, New Jersey. Though Garber had no known affiliation with the church, which was dedicated in 1861, he was clearly fond of the building as he featured it in two other paintings from earlier in the decade: Sunday at Stockton, 1931 (Private collection) and Church at Stockton, 1936 (Private collection). Lance Humphries suggests that Garber chose to paint this particular view because the church's "... weathered and mottled stucco [providing] interesting texture and the appearance of age, as stucco does in many of Garber's paintings of old mills and houses ... the artist did not paint the front of the building, perhaps because its tall arched windows looked more Victorian than the large multi-paned sash windows on the side, which could be thought from an earlier period" (Daniel Garber, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, 2006, p. 153). The viewer's eye is drawn into the painting via a narrow road, a familiar device in Garber's work from this period. Garber chose to set the church within a woody, bucolic landscape, omitting any evidence of the town of Stockton, which in fact lies directly behind the building. In characteristic fashion, Garber achieves a tapestry-like texture, covering the canvas with a layer of feathery strokes of color, creating a vibrating surface. The contrast between dark and light shades evokes the effects of crisp autumn sunlight as it falls through the trees, while the bright blue and purple hues of the shadows prefigure the artist's boldly colored works of the 1940s.📖