Daniel Garber (1880 - 1958) was born in Manchester, Indiana, launching his professional art career at the age of sixteen. He studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, later moving to Philadelphia to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). He supplemented those lessons by learning from Thomas Anshutz and Hugh Breckenridge at the Darby School of Painting in Fort Washington. Garber was awarded a Cresson Traveling Scholarship, allowing him to go to England, France, and Italy for two years.
Particularly inspired by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, Garber's later work showed a combination of fantasy and realism. Garber also taught for many years, teaching at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art and Design) in 1904, and PAFA from 1909 to 1950. His arch-rival, Arthur B. Carles, also taught at the Academy and advocated for a modernist approach to the arts. Some artists including Quita Brodhead, Mildred Bunting Miller, and Morris Blackburn, were students of both artists at PAFA. These artists described the pressure to choose sides in the differing views on the future of art. His works are represented at the Allentown Art Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Garber's nearly thirty awards include the National Academy of Design's Hallgarten Prize in 1909, the 1924 Bronze Medal from the Carnegie Institute, and a Gold Medal from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.