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In Summer, Twachtman portrayed a view looking southeast toward the back of his Greenwich home, but his vantage point was farther north than in his other images of this subject, in which he stood on the hill just opposite the dwelling. The distance is also revealed in the way that Round Hill Road is more level here than in Twachtman's House (OP.903) and From the Upper Terrace (OP.910), where it forms a sharper diagonal. This is, in fact, the only image of the back of his home that Twachtman definitively created after his final renovation of 1894–95, although House in Snow (OP.917) may have been rendered at this time, due to the suggestion of the presence of two dormers in the north facade, one hidden by a tree.
In Summer, the dormer at the right represents Twachtman’s new western addition to his house, which he built over the rocky foundation of the land so its ground floor was on the second floor of the home. On the south facade, this phase of remodeling resulted in a new formal entryway. On the north facade, the new dormer was part of a renovated master-bedroom suite. In the painting, Twachtman recorded the new relationships that occurred between his home and the land, such as how a tree that was previously at the west side of the house now stood between its dormers, while trees behind the house formed a more central halolike arc over the dwelling than previously. Using a format almost twice as long in width as in height, Twachtman brought out the new elongation of his home, which now adhered more than in the past to the lay of the land. At the left, the line of the roof at its eastern edge is continued in the hill on the opposite side of the road. At the right, the building seems embraced by the swollen shape of the hillside.
Twachtman covered the canvas with a rough ground of dry, thick pigment and then painted over it with layers of equally dry paint. The result is in an encrusted surface whose physical density suggests hardness and stability. This is matched by the work's firmly defined areas of sunlight and shadow that both conjure a long summer afternoon and a feeling of permanence.
There is no indication that this painting was shown during Twachtman’s lifetime. Its first-known exhibition was in 1905 when it was included in a memorial show of the artist’s work at Knoedler Galleries, New York. Subsequently, it was exhibited frequently, and in 1919, it was acquired by Duncan Phillips as part of a group of four paintings by Twachtman that Phillips collected to represent each of the seasons.
From Tucker 1931
He expressed his comprehension of the world, his ideas of man and nature through a unified design. In the picture of his house at Greenwich, now in the Phillips Collection, how well he conveys the running and playing together of the shadows across the breast of the verdant hillside [p. 9].
From Boyle 1979
Whereas the Niagara and Yellowstone series were neither specific nor general enough, in Summer he fully realizes a true sense of light, air, and space; his touch is sure and quick. The house is one with the landscape; all the elements are subtly fused yet hold their own in the picture with an unerring placement, a sure sense of scale, and an equal mastery of color and tone [p. 64].
From Peters 1995
Another change occurred in Twachtman’s art in the late 1890s that was not in the realm of style, but in his subject matter and attitude. A number of landscapes from this time reveal more evidence of cultivation and settlement than had been present in his images previously. These works perhaps reflect a phase in Twachtman’s life when, after years in Greenwich and after extensive modification of his home and land, he had come to feel comfortably settled into a place that he felt to be his own. Summer exemplifies this new orientation (fig. 418). Showing the house presiding over the open sun-filled meadow, and firmly ensconced in the landscape, the painting conveys a mood of contentment. The lines of the hillside above the house descend to join the line of its roof, while the landscape below sweeps up to embrace the structure. A tree behind the house roots it in its space. Covering the canvas with a thick, densely woven layer of paint, Twachtman conveys a sense of the heavy heat and dry ground in summer. Patches of light and shadow are strongly contoured, revealing a light that is defining rather than transitory.
From Larkin 2001
Summer also shows segments of dry-stone walling. Whether relics of the land’s agricultural past or replicas built by Twachtman, they lie on the land as naturally as the rock outcroppings in the foreground. Painted after Twachtman had enlarged the house, Summer records his progress in integrating it with the landscape. The format, unusual for the artist, is a long horizontal that splits into two near-squares along the columnar central tree. The left half includes a neighbor’s pasture, edged by a cow path meandering along Round Hill Road; the right half shows Twachtman’s place. Large trees shade the house front and back, with smaller ones providing privacy along the road. The house hugs the hillside, its roofline a continuation of the land’s contours, its dormered windows like eyes on the earth. The painting offers a broader vista and greater expanse of sky than is usual in Twachtman’s Greenwich paintings. In Summer, he deviated from the usual format in order to relate his house to the earth, trees, and sky.
- Museum website (phillipscollection.org)