The Highlighter is the run down on the best resources The Falvey Library has to offer.

This week, The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia added coverage of notable works of art, including an essay about the painting The Orchard Window by Daniel Garber.

Associate Professor of art history Mark Sullivan wrote the essay. Sullivan wrote the recently published Picturing Thoreau: Henry David Thoreau in American Visual Culture (Lexington Books, 2015). View the introduction to Sullivan’s encyclopedic entry below:

Painted in 1918 by Philadelphia artist Daniel Garber (1880-1958), The Orchard Window depicts the interior of Garber’s studio in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and features his 12-year-old daughter Tanis sitting in a sun-dappled window seat, reading a book. This large oil painting on canvas has been highly regarded as a prime example of Pennsylvania Impressionism, a variation on the French Impressionism of Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903).

The Orchard Window is one of Garber’s masterpieces, dating from a period when the artist reached the height of his popularity. In this painting, Garber combined the atmospheric concerns of impressionism with the sharp, careful drawing typical of all graduates of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. By flattening out the picture plane in the background (in other words, by making the view out the window almost two-dimensional), he also added a decorative quality that was new to his work at the time.

To view the full essay, view The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia with access from Falvey Memorial Library.