Summertime

A young woman pauses on the steps of a stone building, dressed in a light summer frock and a wide straw hat. The sunlight is bright and flat, the kind you get on a warm afternoon when the streets feel empty and still. Edward Hopper painted "Summertime" in 1943, and like much of his work, it captures that quiet, slightly lonely mood of American life. The woman stands alone, looking out at something we cannot see, and there is a sense that she might be waiting, or simply soaking up the day.

Hopper was a master of stillness and light, and you can feel it here in the sharp shadows cast by the columns and the soft glow of her thin dress. A curtain drifts out of an open window behind her, the only hint of a breeze in an otherwise frozen scene. Hopper rarely explained his paintings, leaving us to fill in the story ourselves. Is she lost in thought, or about to step out into the world? That open question is part of why his work still pulls people in, decades later.