Gerald Peters Gallery is showing Summer Idyll, a presentation of pleine air landscapes and figural works from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by a select group of American Impressionist painters. 

Whether showing populated beaches or quiet landscapes, the works showcased in Summer Idyll are characterized by their rejection of the urban, industrialized world and the importance they place on honoring leisure time and self-reflection. Their attention is to capturing the world of American middle-class life and to expressing their belief in the restorative promise of time spent out-of-doors. Such an idealizing vision of nature and a person's relationship to it remained primary to the work of many of the American Impressionists and is expressed by the canvases that comprise the present exhibition.  

Summer Idyll features the quiet and atmospheric White Mountain scene of Frank Benson, whose residence in the summer art colony of Dublin, New Hampshire, inspired him to divert his attention from the figure to complete a series of softly painted views of Mount Monadnock; a meditative figural work of Lawton Parker, whose tenure in Giverny solidified him as a master of capturing the play of color and light against different surfaces; and a lively summer, pleine-air beach scene of Edward Potthast, whose work adeptly describes the laissez faire quality and cheerful experience of a summer day spent on along the seashore. 

Summer Idyll is on view at Gerald Peters Gallery, 24 East 78th Street, from June 30 through August 28, Monday through Friday, 10 am to 5 pm. For a complete list of artists in the exhibition, as well as additional images, please visit our website: www.gpgallery.com. For a price list and further information, please contact Gavin Spanierman, Managing Director, at spanierman@gpgalleryny.com or (212) 628-9760.