Fanny

 I met this young girl on a recent trip to the James Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA. It was quite by accident. I was looking for something to do recently. I had been by the museum many times. So, I decided to spend a couple of hours educating myself. I’ve always been interested in art and photography. Michener, one of the great authors of the 2oth Century, was a patron of the arts and a collector. I was immediately taken in by the work of Daniel Garber. Garber was an American Impressionist known for his landscapes in and around New Hope and Bucks County Pennsylvania. Most of his work did not include images of people. Obviously, one caught my eye.

Garber was born in Indiana in 1880. He studied art in Cincinnati and Europe. He moved to Cuttalossa in the early 1900s about six miles up the Delaware River from New Hope, and opened a studio in Lumberville. He taught art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for 40 years. While he was a warm, loving family man, he could be tough on his students. One of his granddaughters tells a story of Garber reviewing the work of his students. He stopped at one young woman’s work and said, “Can you cook?” The confused student said no. Garber said, “You better learn because you can’t paint.”

Garber did paint four significant figural works including “Fanny” his granddaughter. Having four granddaughters, Fanny stopped me cold. It was painted in the summer of 1943. It’s a large vertical piece. Fanny is a young girl about nine or ten years old. She has blond hair pulled back and braided across the top of her head. She’s wearing a pleaded pink dress with draped sleeves and two pockets on the front. She stands barefoot with her hands behind her back against a stone interior wall in a shadow looking out through an archway to the sunlight. Next to her, you see the end of a bench with an open book and shawl hanging to the floor.

It’s the look in her eyes that draws you in. She has the gaze of innocence wondering what lies ahead of her. She is standing in the protective shade of the pink and beige earth tones that are shielding her from the bright sunlight of the unknown future. The look speaks to her curiosity to learn about the world around her, the shawl the protective wrap for the uncertain times. Her hands behind her back and her bare feet show a reserve as she wonders about her life ahead, but is not yet ready to take the first steps forward.

Fanny is on the edge of adolescents when life gets much more complicated. She is a symbol of every young girl facing puberty, high school, boys, peer pressure, college, career, and maybe a family of her own some day in the distance. I think she’s projecting the fantasized image of beautiful innocent youth. Maybe that’s a good thing, and we should make it all our responsibility to protect and nurture the gift of our children. The older they get, the further they pull away into their own lives.

Daniel Garber’s full life was suddenly cut short when he fell from a ladder at his studio in 1958 and died. He was 78. He produced hundreds of paintings that influenced a generation of artists and are still impacting people today. You should take a look and see what enlightens or moves you. I was moved by one little girl whose picture is now framed on a wall where I can see her everyday and hope for the future.