A Summer Day 1927

Gerda Wegener made this painting, A Summer Day, with oil on canvas, and look at the light, these sharp-edged shapes cutting through the scene, like the artist herself is trying to see. Imagine her in the studio, looking at these figures, how they pose, recline, and play music, all the while surrounded by flowers and trees in full bloom. What a life! The paint itself looks thin, almost translucent in places, and this gives the scene an ethereal quality, like a half-remembered dream. I see the painter painting, wearing pink, but she is painting what looks like the very scene we are already seeing? Wegener might be asking, what is real, what is artifice? This piece has the feel of those painters playing with perspective and form. It feels related to the work of so many artists who ask questions with paint.