Winslow Homer’s ‘Summer Night’ examined at Harvard Art Museums
Considered by many one of the best nocturnes in the American artistic canon, Winslow Homer’s “Summer Night,” painted in oil at Prouts Neck, Maine, in 1890, is on loan to the Harvard Art Museums from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris through July. The work, the topic of a discussion series at the museums, is also a favorite of the museums’ Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director Martha Tedeschi. A Homer scholar, Tedeschi said his brilliance was his ability to capture on the canvas “something that most of us couldn’t even put into words.” The Gazette spoke with Tedeschi recently about “Summer Night,” Harvard’s own Homer collection, and the artist’s intent. GAZETTE: What first drew your interest to Winslow Homer? TEDESCHI: When I was a curator of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, I proposed a Homer exhibition and catalog based on our robust collection of watercolors that would...