Glow Little Lantern, Glimmer

George Tooker's painting In the Summerhouse conjures an intimate, mysterious scene.

Two young women hold Japanese lanterns that cast a warm glow in the evening air. Enclosed within the latticework of a gazebo, they stand close together, their arms overlapping, in a scene of casual intimacy.

Born in 1920, Tooker (shown below) studied with Reginald Marsh and Kenneth Hayes Millar at the Art Students League and later with Paul Cadmus. To achieve his haunting scenes of urban isolation and modern-day mechanization, Tooker employs the Renaissance egg-tempera technique.

Learn more about this fascinating artist in an interview in the Spring 2002 issue of American Art.

Source: Virginia Mecklenburg. Scenes of American Life: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Joan Stahl. American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection (Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995).

Pictured top: George Tooker, born 1920, In the Summerhouse, 1958, tempera on fiberboard, 24 x 24 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation.

Pictured bottom: Photographic portrait of George Tooker, born 1920, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection.