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Summer
Jean-Baptiste Pater (French, 1695–1736)
c. 1720–36
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- 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.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of Harry D. Kendrick
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this 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.
