Point Pleasant

Complemented by a period frame. Signed lower left.

Samuel George Phillips (1890-1965)

Regarded by some as “a poor man’s Garber” (poor needing to be redefined these days) S. George Phillips painted rich and colorful landscapes depicting views of the Delaware River and the environs surrounding New Hope. An extremely competent artist, Samuel George Phillips was born in Pennsylvania in 1890. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under William Merritt Chase, Cecilia Beaux, Hugh Breckenridge and Daniel Garber. He then traveled to Europe to continue his studies.

Phillips began his career as an illustrator and commercial artist. His work appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, the Ladies Home Journal, McCall’s, and the Liberty Magazine. His best known work as an illustrator was the Santa Claus logo he designed for the Whitman Candy Company.

Around 1915, Phillips established a portrait studio in Philadelphia. Soon he was to become one of Philadelphia’s pre-eminent portraitists, painting many prominent socialites, politicians, and academicians. For fifty years he commuted from his home in Atlantic City to his Philadelphia studio. Like many artists, painting was Phillip’s livelihood and although landscape painting was his passion, the bills were paid by monies earned for commissioned portraits and illustration work. Phillips found portrait painting to be stressful and landscape painting to be relaxing. As a result, he would frequently spend weekends in Bucks County, taking part time residence at the Point Pleasant Inn. There, he would drive around the hills of Point Pleasant and the villages of Carversville and Lumberville in search of the perfect composition to paint. Phillip’s broken brush stroke impressionist style, fresh palette and keen sense of draftsmanship, strikingly reveals the influence of his former teacher, Daniel Garber. Evidence shows that Phillip’s on occasion to used the name H.C. Lindsay as an alias on his paintings as shown in the work “Near Carversville, Summer” on page 390. Phillips exhibited his work at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The National Academy of Design, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Sources: New Hope for American Art by James M. Alterman
Bianco Gallery Archives,1997