William L. Garver, Jr.’s lithographs indeed entitle him to a place among the nation’s foremost print artists. His lithographs are characterized by richness in contrast, texture and form. There is an intense feeling for space distribution within each composition and a precise knowledge of solid geometry. One senses a mastery of the lithographic stone and affiliated techniques. Most of his printed subject matter derives from plein-air pencil and/or pastel sketches he completed on site.
A 2019 exhibition entitled, “Making Modern America,” at the Philbrook Museum of Art featured lithographic prints by William L. Garver, Jr. (1911-1996) alongside those of his artistic contemporary, friend and mentor: Alexandre Hogue (1898-1994). Both artists produced their work at the University of Tulsa in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The exhibition also included work by Joseph Stella, Stuart Davis, Ida Abelman, John Marin, Thomas Hart Benton, Ralston Crawford, Russell Lee, Leon Kroll, Walter Teague and Charles Sheeler.
“Big cities like New York, as well as urban centers like Tulsa, flourished in the post-World War I environment that celebrated technology, machinery, and modern styles in art and architecture. Rural areas were transformed as rails, roads, and powerlines crisscrossed the country. Factories and refineries joined shipyards and granaries to alter the look of America,” stated Curator Catherine Whitney.
Industrial advance transformed the social and natural landscape of America, and William L. Garver, Jr. recorded this change. His large body of lithographic prints depict the beauty and blight of the built environment, urban views, railyards, the locomotive, copper mines, factories, the oil industry, powerlines, granaries, rural America, and shipyards.
From 1956 to 1964 William produced a prolific series of lithographs, and several can be found in both private collections and in several institutional collections:
Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM): “The Beauty of the Night,” 1958; “Antiques,” 1958. Link: https://americanart.si.edu/artist/william-l-garver-1743
Gilcrease Museum: Gilcrease has 36 of the Garver lithographs in their collection, including: “Scrap Iron,” 1960 and “Gone But Not Forgotten,” 1960. Link: https://collections.gilcrease.org/creator/william-lincoln-garver-garver
In 1960 the Gilcrease Museum exhibited approximately 15-20 of Garver’s lithographs.
Philbrook Museum of Art: “A Pattern,” 1956; “The Copper Mines,” 1957; “The Beauty of the Night,” 1958; and “Grain Elevators,” 1958.
In 1934, the Philbrook Art Center held a one-man exhibition of William L. Garver, Jr.’s work.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
William L. Garver, Jr. was one of the most ambitious American painters of the 20th century. He did not want to confine himself to one medium. His versatility and use of different painting techniques and medium attest to an unrelenting desire to experiment. As stated by his friend and mentor, Frank von der Lancken, “Art is a language of sensation and the verbal description of a sensation is difficult.” As such, William believed that one must be willing to experiment with visual imagery, as the vehicle for the expression of an idea, to attain that sensation. Experimentation included looking at the colorwork and compositions of other artists, such William’s 1970 study of Pierre Bonnard’s “The Port of Cannes” from 1926-27.
William believed in the basic principles of art: balance, rhythm, color and form. He believed that cohesion of these elements would render an image that conveys meaning yet is also visually accessible. He was interested in developing an aesthetic that was distinctly American, and as such, his goal was to capture an authentic representation of human experience and create a comprehensible visual language that is grounded in that experience. This is clearly evident in his paintings and lithographs of the American industrial, urban and rural landscape.
One of the most productive phases in Garver’s artistic career began in 1932 when he met Frank von der Lancken (1872-1950), who had arrived in Tulsa in 1926 to teach. One of William’s favorite past-times was to join Frank and others at the von der Lancken house in Tulsa for informal group painting sessions. William did most of his portraiture oil paintings during this time, such as “Nurse in White,” 1932-35 (bottom left).
Given the depth of his talent, William L. Garver Jr.’s prodigious output is the result in part to the combined influence of Frank von der Lancken’s (1872-1950) Arts and Crafts ideology and Alexandre Hogue’s (1898-1994) landscape sensibility impacted by the Dust Bowl years. William worked in the oil painting medium throughout his entire life.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
When sketching on site, watercolor and gouache were quick and easy ways for William to record color on paper or board, and some of these became the foundation for his oil paintings. These water-based materials, which he used with great proficiency, were a staple in his studio practice.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
William L. Garver, Jr. loved industrial America, and pastel was one of his favorite medium. He also loved trains and railyards. The result is an astounding oeuvre of pastel drawings depicting American industry and the changes happening across America during his lifetime. His subject matter includes things people saw every day: steam engines, railroad cars, grain elevators, granaries, power lines, industrial sites, refineries, smokestacks, machinery, architecture, barges, harbors, and rural and urban America with teeming cityscapes located along the railroad lines. These were symbols of American technological innovation crisscrossing the nation, and William’s is a rather straightforward vision of the industrial landscape. In essence they represent America’s symbols of progress, promise, industrial growth, and collective innovation in the 21st century, as well as their impact on the landscape. William looked at manmade landmarks as well as pastoral scenes. What he did was capture the age of iron. William called these places, “My America.”
In these pastels he employed the basic elements of art that include line, color, shape, a sense of depth, and structural sensibility. These elements work together seamlessly to create a scene that captures a dynamic moment in time in America. The Grumbacher box of pastels were his favorite, and sometimes he added watercolor or gouache accents to the drawings. He typically carried 11” x 14” or 12” x 18” spiral notebooks of woven colored drawing paper everywhere he went, as well as a thin metal Mars Staedtler box for extra pencils.
William’s brother was an engineer for one of the major rail lines, so he heard first hand about life on the rail. And it was common to find William with his portable sketching stool and box of pastels sitting alongside a train line or at an industrial yard to draw on site. In subsequent years he took his children and grandchildren to sketch with him on these excursions.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
Lila Rowena Selzer Garver was a normal person living an ordinary life doing extraordinary things. She was strong, intelligent, resourceful, industrious, witty, calm, sincere and thoughtful, and she was the rock of the family. Lila recorded her and William’s life in the American Southwest and travels beyond in her writing. She typed letters to family and friends on a beautiful deep red manual typewriter. Her straightforward prose and vernacular descriptions are invaluable sources of quotidian life with an artist.
In between descriptions of daily life, she includes paragraphs about interactions between William and curators or planned excursions to the countryside to draw. Lila also took care of the daily necessities of life so that William could focus full-time on his artwork in the evenings after work and on the weekends. He would not have produced his prolific body of work without her support and dedicated encouragement, and her letters to family and friends provide an everlasting glimpse into their life together.
The Archive is culling existing Lila typed letters, or digital images thereof, from Selzer/Garver family and friends to add to the collection. If you are a member of or a descendant of the Selzer/Garver family – or a descendant of a friend of the family - and have letters either to or from Lila Rowena Selzer Garver or William L. Garver, Jr., that you would like to donate to the archive for preservation, please contact us: info@garverarchive.org. Thank you.
Image left top: Lila Rowena Selzer Garver’s manual typewriter she used all her life.
Image left middle: Excerpt from one of Lila’s letters.
Image left bottom: William L. Garver, Jr., “The Homestead (Clearfield, Kansas),” Lithograph, ,1957 14.5 x 10 in. original., depicting the farmhouse where Lila grew up.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved. Images courtesy Estate of Lila & William L. Garver, Jr.
Drawing was the foundation for painting, believed William L. Garver, Jr., and he ascribed to the belief that the more you draw the more you see. He was always looking at the world around him. He drew everything from animals at the zoo to tabletop still life to grain elevators and botanical motifs.
Even though any pencil would do, his favorite pencils were Wolff’s Carbon made in Great Britian. With these he varied the pressure of the pencil on the paper to achieve the nearly undetectable differentiation of line thickness. His drawings tended to radiate across the sheet with a sense for the equal importance of all elements of space with three-dimensional vitality. He rarely erased, if at all.
While exploring the effect of positive and negative form, William played with the spatial distance between foreground and background. A fundamental understanding of solid geometry pervades each drawing with a mastery of scale and space. Through the creative process of drawing daily, with transmission between the eye and the hand, he developed confidence in his ability to draw anything. To him drawing was fun. It was like breathing.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
Strathmore board cut to the size of a standard envelope for mailing was the first step in creating his art cards, which William L. Garver, Jr. sent to friends and family throughout his whole life. Each card typically included a hand-drawn image and hand-written script, both in black india ink. He then added watercolor, gouache, pencil, acrylic or oil paint to complete the image. Most times the script or story was on the back of the card, and in his later years it was in ballpoint pen. Sometimes the text was about daily life, other times it was a quote from something interesting he had read. Classical music from his phonograph pervaded his studio when he was making these.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
The Archive is currently assembling a portfolio of historical images culled from a variety of sources, including original negatives.
Top image: William L. Garver, Jr. on a sketching trip in Oklahoma with his two children, 1950. Photography by Lila R. Selzer Garver.
Middle image: William L. Garver, Jr. and Lila Rowena Selzer Garver, 1941.
Bottom image: polaroid, William L. Garver, Jr. plein air sketching in Texas with his granddaughter, 1971.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
William L. Garver, Jr.’s sketchbooks were indefatigable graphic reservoirs. There was a freedom of expression with a quick sketch. He almost always used pencil and many times mixed media to draw what he saw and record his ideas. He drew daily and carried a sketchbook everywhere he went. Sketchbook size varied according to activity.
It was easier to carry a 5”x7” or a 6”x8” in a work bag during the week, with a preference for Strathmore multi-purpose paper for pencil, crayon and charcoal but also suitable for pen & ink, watercolor and pastel. For weekend outings in the ‘motorcar’ he typically took a larger 12”x18” sketchbooks. For easy transport anywhere via foot, car or airplane, his pencils resided in a 2”x7-1/4”x3/4” rectangular Mars Staedtler metal box with a lid.
A beautiful, utilitarian canvas seat on folding wooden legs accompanied William on his sketching outings. He made several of these stools for himself and Lila, as well as for his children and grandchildren when they sketched him.
Although William preferred to draw on site, or ‘plein air’, there are whimsical sketches in this oeuvre as well. They were typically completed in his studio. Some are derived from his readings, others from a vibrantly creative imagination, and still others from looking at other artists and their work. Because paper was scarce early in his career, he considered it a luxury and never wasted a sheet. As such, he drew on both sides of the paper. Many of these sketches became source material for several prints and paintings.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
His facility with pen and ink rivalled that of any artist of his time. William L. Garver, Jr. would confidently dip his pen into the inkwell throughout his lifetime, sometimes to produce a black and white drawing unto itself, other times to produce a drawing as a basis for a watercolor or gouache painting.
His “dip pen” was a drawing tool consisting of two parts: a replaceable metal point or “nib,” and a wooden handle that holds the nib. William originally used metal nibs made of copper and bronze, and his later nibs were of steel. The nib has a slit at the end that leads the ink from a vent hole to the paper, and as such a “dip pen” was dipped into an ink bottle or inkwell in order to draw with it.
William’s nibs were made in two primary styles: a broad nib and a pointed nib. The broad nib has a flat, wider and slightly rounder tip. When drawing he could change the direction of the stroke from thin to thick lines. The pointed nib has a sharp point, but he could also produce thin and thick lines depending on the amount of pressure applied to the surface of the paper. He achieved thicker lines by applying stronger pressure and leaving more ink on the paper’s surface. Conversely less pressure produced thinner lines. His inkwell was a tapered, flat-bottom glass container that held black India ink. At one point he was using Parker Quink, which came in a 4 ounce glass storage jar from The Parker Pen Company. William also used Keuffel and Esser (K+E) 6” Paragon wytetip hatching pens with steel points, well suited for detailed work.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
The artistic process is about finding one’s visual language, and the tools and medium used by artists inform this tactile process. The surrounding items found in an artists’ studio are some of the most important and informative materials regarding the creative process and the finished work in understanding an artist.
A sketch in Wolff’s Carbon (charcoal) pencil can look completely different in a new medium. The inkwell and pen nibs used for India ink drawings require a developed hand for application on board or paper. Artist books are source material, as are collections of printed maps and postcards. A portable wooden paint box gives one a tangible idea of scale of enterprise and materials taken when doing plein-air work on site.
The Archive includes ephemera from William L. Garver, Jr.’s studio and Lila Rowena Selzer’s life, available for viewing upon request.
The Archive library also has a copy of For the Love of Art: The Life and Art of William L. Garver Jr., a 191-page book produced by his children, Marjorie L. Garver LaFoe and John William Garver, 2012, ISBN 978-0-9860187-0-1. The album contains 173 color images of oils paintings and 49 black and white images of lithographs.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
William L. Garver, Jr. was one of the 20th century artists most in tune with the modernization and industrialization of America. A passion for industrial America along the railroads was one of the major themes that pervaded his work. New industry at that time followed the railway lines, representative of the modern changes and dynamism of the Machine Age and its powerful movement as a symbol of progress. He captured not only the beauty of the functional design of trains, railway architecture and surrounding cities but also the allure of the inherent geometry of these forms, from the drive wheel of the locomotive’s cylinders to the engine’s powerful presence.
As such, William was a painter whose style was marked by sharply defined geometric forms and volumes of color with flat planes of focus. He and his older half-brother, Roy A. Townsend, knew all the parts of the train and how they worked. Roy was an engineer on one of the major rail lines his entire life (see photo). He was a fellow railway afficionado and had a great influence on William when they were growing up in the American industrial age. They remained close all their lives. Roy’s stories of life on the railroad, in conjunction with Williams’s contemporary drawings and paintings, reveal how the American pioneering spirit pervaded this technological and industrial modernization and so-called progress of America.
It was common to see William walking along the railway lines to find a place to draw. Later in life he shared the joy of these escapades with his children and grandchildren when they sketched together.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
© 2023 Lila & William L. Garver, Jr. Archive. All rights reserved.
