The Passing of Summer

Harry W. Watrous

1912 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

When the Metropolitan Museum acquired this painting just after it was completed, the artist explained that in the autumn of 1911 he had observed a woman seated alone at a table in a French restaurant. Watrous asked her, "Well, has Prince Charming appeared?" Her melancholy answer was "No, and this is the passing of summer." This work thus alludes to the fleeting nature of youth and beauty and the loss of opportunity. About 1905 the artist's eyesight began to fail, and he shifted from exquisitely rendered, tiny genre scenes recalling seventeenth-century Dutch paintings to larger canvases containing idealized female figures, such as "The Passing of Summer".

Artist

Harry W. Watrous

Date

1912

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

George A. Hearn Fund, 1912