Daniel Garber was born in 1880 in Indiana and came to Philadelphia at the turn of the century. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy and later joined its staff as an assistant to Thomas Anshutz. He taught at the Academy for forty-one years, was given a fellowship and spent two years in Europe, where he exhibited three paintings at the Paris Salon. He settled into a homestead, "Cuttalossa", near Lumberville along the Delaware River and lived and worked there until his death in 1958, following a fall from a ladder outside his studio.