Type: Oil on canvas
Canvas Size: 74 x 111.8 cm
Location: Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington
Purchased: Gift of Dora Sexton Brown
© Estate of Edward Hopper

Summertime shows a young woman in a revealingly transparent dress on the steps of a building in the city. She is facing into the sun, and her stance has a slightly provocative quality. Behind her, the open front door is in darkness. Into the geometry of the architecture Hopper has introduced life by showing curtains blowing back from an open window (with the room beyond it again in darkness). As Hopper's preliminary studies show, these curtains were not added till the final version of the picture. The possible sexual innuendo seems clear. The emphasis on interiors that draws us in, and the phallic columns, make of this streetside composition a complex of subconscious desires and projected wish-fulfilment.

Source: Edward Hopper - Taschen: Basic Art Album Series Book