The present painting depicts a mother and her daughters overlooking an expansive landscape under a billowing, summer's sky. Philip Connard, RA was an accomplished British Impressionist painter, notable for his evocative plein air painting of which Summer is a beautiful example. Connard's prowess in rendering light and movement is seen in the bold and fluid brushwork.

Connard was born in Southport, Lancashire to a family of modest means. He received a basic education before joining the building trade as a housepainter. As a result of his employment, Connard quickly realised he possessed a dextrous hand, affirming the artistic inclination he had thought he held for much of his life. This natural ability was confirmed as he began attending evening art classes, excelling to such an extent that he was awarded a National Scholarship in 1886 to attend the Royal College of Art in South Kensington. A further award of the British Institute travelling scholarship allowed him to travel to Paris in 1898. He enrolled at the Académie Julian, a private art school which at this time had distinctly international outlook, featuring students of more than fifty nationalities.

Like earlier British painters such as Walter Sickert and Wilson Steer, Connard’s time in the French capital shaped his artistic practice. He found himself enthralled with Impressionist painting, particularly its practice of en plein air, evidenced in the present work. 

Connard was elected to the Royal Academy in 1925, becoming Keeper of the Royal Academy school and principal tutor from 1945 to 1949. Outside of his landscapes for which he is best known, he was given a number of important decorative commissions: murals at Windsor Castle; two panels for a ballroom in New Delhi; and a large panel on the subject of England for the Cunard liner, RMS Queen Mary. His work can be found in the Tate Gallery, London; the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; the National Gallery of Australia, the Royal Academy, London, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the National Museum of Wales and the Imperial War Museum (having served in the army and subsequently as an Official War Artist).