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• 20th Century American Painting

• Summer Breeze , 1904
• oil on canvas
• 30 1/8 in. x 25 1/8 in. (76.52 cm x 63.82 cm)

• Edmund Charles Tarbell  (1862 - 1938)
• American

• Anonymous gift, 1992.1

• On View

Interpretive text from Exploring American Art: An Online Resource for the American Collections

(For biographical information on Edmund Tarbell, see entry under Tarbell, Mercie Cutting Flowers (Portrait of a Young Lady), 1998.2, link: http://collections.currier.org/Obj54${SessionID} )

During the late 1890s Tarbell commenced a series of impressionistic plein-air canvases notable for their freedom of execution.  In the Currier's Summer Breeze and other costume studies of the period, Tarbell pushed the limits of Impressionism, creating some of the boldest paintings of the Boston School.  The subject of Summer Breeze is a fashionably dressed young woman seen from about the waist up.  Set against a backdrop of puffy clouds and blue sky, she holds the brim of her hat in one hand as vigorous breezes pluck at ribbons, sash, and scarf.  Sweeping, almost abstract brushstrokes and a strong sense of bright sunlight lend the painting a feeling of freshness that belies the studied introspection of the figure itself.

Summer Breeze was among the last of Tarbell's plein-air figure studies, for by the time it was painted in 1904, the artist had come to realize that his critics would not accept the advanced Impressionist technique embodied in this and earlier works.  Indeed, a similar painting of about 1898, The Blue Veil (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), was deemed by one reviewer as "not persuasive" and "little more than an experiment."(1)  Although Tarbell persisted with his "experiments" for several more years, he eventually returned to the combination of mild Impressionism and academic discipline that characterizes later works such as the Currier's Mercie Cutting Flowers (Portrait of a Young Lady) (q.v.).

While some observers have assumed that the subject of Summer Breeze is a member of Tarbell's family, descendants have identified the young woman as an artist's model.  In the years around the turn of the century, Tarbell was well known for his images of female figures, which formed a staple of his exhibition entries.  Summer Breeze belongs to this category and was shown a number of times during the artist's lifetime.  First appearing in the annual exhibition of the Ten American Painters in 1905, it was later featured in solo shows of Tarbell's work held at the Montross Gallery in New York (1907), the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (1908); and the Copley Society in Boston (1912).  Summer Breeze was also included in a joint exhibition of Tarbell and Frank W. Benson (q.v.), which opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a few months after the former's death in 1938.

Shortly after it was painted, Summer Breeze was purchased by Frank P. Carpenter of Manchester, New Hampshire.  The painting remained in his family for decades until it was presented to the Currier Museum of Art by granddaughter Elizabeth Carpenter Floyd in 1992.  

VSD

NOTE

1.