Summer Beauty

This beautiful vision of summer is painted by Frank Benson.

Artists have often used allegories of the seasons to suggest a stable present and areliable future in times of dramatic social and economic change. The Gilded Age was such a period. Benson's wife, Ellen Perry Pierson, modeled for this elegant depiction of summer, which he painted at the small art colony of Dublin, New Hampshire.

Other works by this artist can be seen in our traveling exhibitions American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, currently on view at the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York, and The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, now showing at the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Pictured: Frank W. Benson, 1862–1951, Summer, 1890, oil, 50 1/8 x 40 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly.