Artist:
Howard Pyle
(American, 1853 - 1911)
A Dream of Young Summer
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1901
Dimensions:
22 1/8 × 12 1/8 in. (56.2 × 30.8 cm)
Accession number: 2007.11.24
Label Copy:
Originally created to illustrate Edith M. Thomas’s contemporary poem of the same name, Howard Pyle’s A Dream of Young Summer conjures visions of an enchanted land that transcends time. The personification of "Young Summer" as a nature sprite matches the description in Thomas’s poem: "Thy wings with many a prism-lighted gleam / Are overshot, and from a magic reed / Thou drawest forth those melodies supreme." Pyle excelled in his ability to imagine and illustrate the fantastic scenes of romantic poems and adventure stories.
After its publication in Harper’s Monthly in June of 1901, Pyle gave the painting to the American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, adding this inscription to the front of the painting: "To Augustus Saint-Gaudens / This picture of "Young Summer" in the Fraternal / Greeting of his Brother in Art." He sent it to the sculptor in exchange for a plaster study for the head of "Victory" that graces Saint-Gaudens’s Sherman Monument in New York’s Grand Army Plaza. Pyle in turn used the sculpture as a model for his 1905 painting Why Seek Ye the Living Among the Dead, demonstrating their true brotherhood in art.
Originally created to illustrate Edith M. Thomas’s contemporary poem of the same name, Howard Pyle’s A Dream of Young Summer conjures visions of an enchanted land that transcends time. The personification of "Young Summer" as a nature sprite matches the description in Thomas’s poem: "Thy wings with many a prism-lighted gleam / Are overshot, and from a magic reed / Thou drawest forth those melodies supreme." Pyle excelled in his ability to imagine and illustrate the fantastic scenes of romantic poems and adventure stories.
After its publication in Harper’s Monthly in June of 1901, Pyle gave the painting to the American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, adding this inscription to the front of the painting: "To Augustus Saint-Gaudens / This picture of "Young Summer" in the Fraternal / Greeting of his Brother in Art." He sent it to the sculptor in exchange for a plaster study for the head of "Victory" that graces Saint-Gaudens’s Sherman Monument in New York’s Grand Army Plaza. Pyle in turn used the sculpture as a model for his 1905 painting Why Seek Ye the Living Among the Dead, demonstrating their true brotherhood in art.
Curatorial RemarksIllustration for Edith M. Thomas, "A Dream of Young Summer," Harper's Monthly, June 1901 , Pyle's painting mixes the image of a winged Victory with a piping wood nymph to create his idea of "Young Summer." Such combination of images - therefore of ideas - is characteristic of the eclecticism of the American Renaissance.