Painters of all ages and latitudes have often ventured into the representation of summer, the season most loved by all, synonymous with the expected holidays. Poppies in the wheat fields, beaches and that warm and particular light, which is only there on summer evenings. Here then is the top ten of the 10 paintings that best represent it
MILAN – Diffused light, warm colors, summer landscapes are some of the characteristics common to the paintings of Monet, Bruegel, Hopper and Gauguin. There have been numerous painters who throughout the history of art have painted at least one summer-themed painting, be it a seascape or a ripe wheat field. Today we propose the ranking of the 10 paintings that in our opinion most represent the summer. Claude Monet – Les Coquelicots, 1873
This is the typical image of summer that you look at in winter, hanging on the walls of millions of waiting rooms, the painting that carries you adrift, radiating you with the warmth and light that invade that same field in which, among the ears mature, a woman and a child are walking with a parasol. The mother and child are probably Monet’s wife and son. The painting, made in 1873 is one of the most famous paintings of Impressionism, as well as one of the most loved by the public all over the world.
Image source: http://www.musee-orsay.fr/it/collezioni/catalogo-delle-opere/notice.html
no_cache = 1 & S = 1 & nnumid = 001010 & cHash = 80cf6e95e3 Pieter Bruegel the Elder – The Harvesters, 1565
The scene represented by Bruegel the Elder describes work and rest on a summer day, probably in August. In the foreground, two peasants cut long ears of wheat with scythes, while a third crosses the field through an opening, carrying a pitcher and heading towards the pear tree on the right, where some peasants are resting, eating and drinking in the shade. Further behind, on the right, some women tie the sheaves and collect the cut ears. While our gaze rests on the horizon, it is as if we feel all the heat and the cicadas of that cornfield.
Image source http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/435809
rpp = 20 & pg = 1 & ft = bruegel & pos = 1 Edward Hopper – Second Story Sunlight, 1960
The house is typical of Hopper, white, pitched roof, silent against the cobalt sky. The sun hits the old lady dressed in black and the young girl waiting for someone or something. But there is an abysmal void between them. What is their relationship?
Why is the house facing the sun as if it is looking at something too ?
Second floor to the sun is the dark and eerie side of summer, and the nostalgic fragment of two lonely lives that for some reason are in the same place and at the same time.
Image Source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/edward-hopper/second-story-sunlight Christian Kobke – Roof Ridge of Frederiksborg Castle, 1834
The wonderful Danish artist Christian Kobke went up to the rooftops to catch the summer by surprise. Here is the dark bridge, the blue water behind it, the landscape repeating these horizontal lines in darker and darker stripes under a still sky that fills three quarters of the picture. It is a real hymn to summer light and infinite panoramas, the kind of landscape that no photograph can contain.
Image source: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/christen-kobke-danish-master-of-light-national-gallery-london-1929128.html
action = Gallery & ino = 3 Isaac Levitan – Summer Evening, 1899
It would be difficult to think of a more beautiful summer evening image on the fields lit by fire than this delicately luminous painting. The parched road begins in the coldest shadows in the foreground, where the viewer is theoretically located, and extends across the field to the trees in the distance. It is as if we are at the beginning of autumn, or certainly at the end of summer.
Image source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/isaac-levitan David Cox – Rhyl Sands, 1854
An impressionist summer day like those painted by Boudin and Monet. But this is the favorite beach of David Cox, an English artist, who loved to spend his free time in Wales. And it never ceases to amaze that the subject is actually a day in the artist’s favorite location on the Welsh coast, that David Cox is English and that the picture was painted around 1855, before impressionism was a glimmer in the eyes. The expanse of the beach, as if the sand had been captured by the paint, the blue sky dotted with light clouds. It almost seems to feel the sea wind of Rhyl Sands on your skin.
Image source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/cox-rhyl-sands-t04130 David Hockney – A bigger splash, 1967
What other living painter has created such a powerful image that we want to be the protagonists of
the 1960s California painting, a hot day in the middle of summer, a hot floor and a pool of cold water. There is no human presence in the painting, or at least not explicit, as Hockney chooses to represent only the splashes of water caused by someone who dived into that pool. which represents midsummer, a day so hot that the only escape is to dive into a cold pool
. Hockney’s swimmer vanished into the depths, leaving only splashes of water in his wake. ‘It took me two weeks,’ Hockney wrote, ‘to paint this two-second event.’
Image Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-a-bigger-splash-t03254 Bridget Riley – To a summer day, 1980
Blue, pink, green and yellow: soft streaks of colors that they mix and cross the canvas horizontally, creating a sort of optical illusion that recalls the continuous breaking of the sea waves. Each variation produces a slightly different glance. Like many other artists, Riley also works on the doors of perception, leading the viewer into another dimension. The title of the painting alludes to Shakespeare’s sonnet, suggesting a comparison with summer.
Image source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/riley-to-a-summers-day-t03375 Louise Moillon – Nature morte avec cerises, fraises et groseilles, 1630
What’s more summery than a beautiful basket of cherries and strawberries
Louise Moillon was one of the best still life painters in France in the first half of the seventeenth century, famous for the skill and classic elegance of forms. Gooseberries, strawberries, cherries and a sprig of currants are impeccably represented, as are the blue and white bowls that contain them. A riot of red, the light reflecting on the cherries, the droplets of water that seem real. Moillon’s masterpiece exudes warmth and sheen, and instills in the viewer a desire to be able to grab and eat those delights.
Image source: http://www.nortonsimon.org/collections/browse_artist.php
name = Moillon% 2C + Louise & resultnum = 2 Paul Gauguin – Femmes de Tahiti, 1891
Everyone knows the life of Gauguin, who from Paris, driven by contempt for contemporary civilization and the desire to find a purer and more instinctive humanity, moved to Tahiti, convinced that he had found Heaven on earth. His Tahitian-themed paintings are practically almost more famous than those of his early days, characterized by bright colors, which lead the viewer’s mind elsewhere, to exotic destinations, those same beaches where Gauguin stayed for a long time.
Image source: http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/oeuvres-commentees/recherche/commentaire/commentaire_id/femmes-de-tahiti-16337.html
no_cache = 1 19 July 2014
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