Summer Day

	Artist: James Cowie
	Title: Summer Day
	Year: c. 1935
	Medium: oil on canvas
	Dimensions:
	Suggested topic: Portraiture
	Source: RSA
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© the artist’s family
Description: James Cowie's work remained distinctive from that of many of his contemporaries, mainly in his reliance on drawing and in his use of muted colours.Summer Day is really the kind of study that sometimes leads on towards a finished portrait, and it was probably made in the garden at Hospitalfield. It relates to a series of complex paintings that Cowie executed over many years. These show young people grouped against a background that often includes a landscape in the manner of Old Master paintings. In contrast to Cowie's finished paintings, this study is fresh and direct. The palette does in fact feature a broad and fairly bright range of colours, especially in the girl's clothes, which help to distinguish her from the dark background. The paint has been “roughed in” to help define her form but is still fairly flat and almost decorative.The composition, showing the girl in three-quarter length view, has two main points of focus. The girl's face, framed by the landscape outside the window, dominates the top half of the image; while her slender hands draw the viewer's eye to the bottom half. This study may have been carried out so that the artist could experiment with shapes and forms to see how they would relate before committing to a more finished canvas.The mood of this image is very placid and thoughtful. Although the girl may have been asked to pose for the image, there is a sense of a story here. Perhaps the girl has come inside to the cool, dark room to escape from the summer sun. Perhaps, on the other hand, she has work to do and longs to go back outside to the sunshine. Her pose is restful and calm, as though she is thinking deeply about something; she seems to be turning something over in her mind just as she turns over the ruler in her hands.