File:Abel Grimmer - Zomer.jpg

English: The composition, which was enormously popular in late 16th and early 17th century Flanders, ultimately derives from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s drawing of 1568 in the Kupferstichkabinett, Hamburger Kunsthalle.1 The drawing was engraved in 1570, probably by Pierre van der Heyden, and all subsequent paintings of the composition, of which there are many, are in the same sense as the engraving, which is to say the reverse sense of Bruegel’s original drawing.

Though Bruegel seems to have conceived his design as a solitary, independent work, it soon became the representation of Summer in various series (both in print and paint) depicting the ‘Four seasons.’ Pierre van der Heyden joined his 1570 engraving of the Bruegel drawing with another, also made after a Bruegel drawing (dated 1565), depicting Spring, and two others copied from drawings by Hans Bol (now lost), dated 1569, that depict Autumn and Winter.

It is likely that the present example originally formed part of such a set of four paintings, as is the case with the 1607-dated version of the composition by Grimmer. It and its three companions, also dated 1607, are in the Koninklijk Museum, Antwerp. The present version differs in several details and shares a little more in common with Bruegel’s original; the Antwerp version, for example, includes a horse and cart in the upper left, where here and in the drawing a closed gate traverses the road, and the tree behind the drinking labourers is in fuller leaf in the Antwerp version, blocking the view through to the sea.