Summer (c. 1720–36): Art, History and Details

Summer (c. 1720–36) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean-Baptiste Pater (French, 1695–1736).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Spring and Summer are two scenes from a series of the four seasons. Both Autumn and Winter are now in the Museu d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. These landscapes were originally a part of a screen or a decorative panel, as indicated by their floral borders and oval shape. The setting of Spring is believed to be the grounds of Montmorency, the country estate of Pierre Crozat (1665-1740), a wealthy financier and art collector in early eighteenth-century Paris. The walkway is very similar to other scenes by Watteau known to depict the estate of his close friend and patron Crozat. As a student of Watteau, Pater would have also been familiar with this setting. Summer counters Spring's aristocratic leisure by depicting rural labor. However, befitting the work's decorative origins, Pater's scene belongs to the tradition of the timeless pastoral. More idyllic than a statement about class differences, the reapers peacefully gather sheaves of wheat as shepherds rest with their flocks in the foreground.

Object facts

• Title: Summer
• Date: c. 1720–36
• Creator attribution: Jean-Baptiste Pater (French, 1695–1736)
• Culture: France
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 76.5 x 66 x 9 cm (30 1/8 x 26 x 3 9/16 in.); Unframed: 65.3 x 53.5 cm (25 11/16 x 21 1/16 in.)
• Collection: P - French 18th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1952.540

Collection credit

Gift of Harry D. Kendrick

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.