Winslow Homer’s Summer Night: New Perspectives

This event was recorded. Please view the lecture here.

On loan to the Harvard Art Museums from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, Winslow Homer’s Summer Night (1890) is often described as one of the most extraordinary nocturnes in the history of American art. This scene of two women dancing in the moonlight at the water’s edge is one of the first oil paintings Homer completed after settling on the coast of Maine in 1883.

This event will bring together three scholars who are providing new insights into Homer’s work: Frank Goodyear, co-director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, who is curating an upcoming exhibition on Homer and photography; Hélène Valance, assistant professor of English at the Université de Franche-Comté, who recently published American Nights: The Art of the Nocturne in the United States, 1890–1917; and Jennifer Roberts, who is the Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University.

Following the lecture, the gallery featuring Summer Night (2700) will remain open until 8pm.

The lecture will take place in Menschel Hall, Lower Level. Please enter the museums via the entrance on Broadway.

Free admission

Complimentary parking available in the Broadway Garage, 7 Felton Street, Cambridge.

Support for this program is provided by the M. Victor Leventritt Fund, which was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard Class of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and Greater Boston communities.