Summer (recto)

1913

William Zorach (American, born Jurbarkas, Russian Empire, now Lithuania, 1887–1966)

William Zorach was better known for his wood and stone sculptures, but he began his career as a painter. He initially worked in a more traditional style, but while studying in Paris in 1911, he met his future wife Marguerite Thompson, who pushed him toward a more avant-garde aesthetic. In 1913 the couple rented a house in Chappaqua, New York, where Zorach painted Summer. This rare, early canvas shows Zorach’s love for the organic forms of nature and his exuberant use of color. The image of four languid nudes in a pastoral setting creates a splendid vision of the artistic life, while the often nonnaturalistic hues draw attention to the abstracted, patterned surface. Both in subject matter and style, Summer reveals the artist’s admiration for the work of Henri Matisse, which he would have seen in Paris and at the 1913 Armory Show.

Status: On View, Gallery 271
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: William Zorach
Title: Summer (recto)
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1913
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed and dated recto, bottom-right, on grass, in black paint: "WM ZORACH. 1913.".
Dimensions: 73.7 × 88.9 cm (29 × 35 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Jamee J. and Marshall Field
Reference Number: 2005.425

Annual Report (Art Institute of Chicago, 2005–2006), p. 22.
William Zorach, Art is My Life: The Autobiography of William Zorach (New York: The World Publishing Company), fig. 16.
Roberta Kupfrian Tarbell, Catalogue Raisonné of William Zorach’s Carved Sculpture (University of Delaware, Ph.D. diss, 1976), 35–36, fig. 11, p. 37.
William H. Robinson, “Against the Grant: The Modernist Revolt,” in Transformations in Cleveland Art, 1796–1946: Community and Diversity in Early Modern America, exh. cat. (Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996), p. 78–79, figs. 70, 71, as Spring (recto) and Untitled (Summer) (verso).
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), cat. 77. 6 & 7.
Annual report (Art Institute of Chicago, 2014–15) online only.

Brooklyn Museum, William Zorach: Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings, 1911–1922, Nov. 26, 1968–Jan. 19, 1969, cat. 4, as Summertime.
Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Museum of Art, Transformations in Cleveland Art, 1796–1946: Community and Diversity in Early Modern America, May 19–July 21, 1996, cat. 217, figs. 70, 71, as Spring (recto) and Untitled (Summer) (verso).

Mrs. Thomas Shanahan, Brooklyn, New York, by 1968 [Brooklyn Museum, William Zorach exhibition, 1968]. Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Field, Lake Forest, Ill., by 1994; given to the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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