Winslow Homer · Summer Night

1890 – Oil on canvas – Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight, And dance by the light of the moon?

John Hodges

Winslow Homer is arguably the most important painter of the 19th-century American Art, an original and innovating artist with a special talent for seascapes, such as “The Gulf Stream” (1899, Metropolitan Museum of Art), “Breezing Up (A Fair Wind)” (1873–76, National Gallery of Art, Washington)

“Summer Night” is one of Homer’s most recognizable works. A sensational nocturnal scene, the painting captures the charm and magic of a summer night. While the spontaneity of the brushstroke is almost impressionist, this work can be considered one of the first masterpieces of American Painting, paving the way for later painters like George Bellows or Edward Hopper.

Martha Tedeschi, director of the Harvard Art Museums, described this painting in a very suggestive way: “One of the things that I think is so successful in this picture, and that I love about Homer in general, is that it evokes things that he could not have possibly painted into the picture, like sound. There are two young women dancing on a porch. That immediately implies that there’s probably music playing. And in fact an early title of this picture was “Buffalo Gals” after the popular song (…) There is also the silhouetted group of people to the right of the picture who appear mesmerized by the sound of the crashing waves and the light flickering across the surface of the water. Homer conjures the sound of relentless splashing and churning. You can feel the spray, you can feel that cool breeze coming across that moonlight sea.”

Text: G. Fernández, theartwolf.com