Summer is the season of Cucuel's paintings, which he repeatedly spent in longer stays at the Upper Bavarian lakes since he had finally moved to Munich in 1907. Originally from San Francisco in sunny California, his path led him via the Académie Julian in Paris and a job as a newspaper illustrator in New York and Berlin, over journeys through France and Italy, finally to Munich, where he joined the artists' group "Die Scholle" around Leo Putz. The latter's combination of landscape painting with female figures would be formative for his style. Cucuel participated in the exhibitions of the Munich Secession, where he mainly presented portraits of women and nudes in light-flooded interiors, plein-air depictions with social scenes and charming Bavarian landscapes. His increasing success enabled him to acquire a large lakeside estate on Ammersee, where he painted numerous bathing nudes and the first "Kahnbilder" (barge pictures) with the typical fashionably dressed and undressed young women. From 1918 he owned a studio house with a large, picturesque garden right Lake Starnberg, where he also went during the summer to capture his light-filled motifs influenced by the spontaneity of French Impressionism and the immediacy of plein-air painting. Fritz von Ostini described Cucuel's idyllic and elegant workplace in lyrical terms: "Here he has his place of study in a large, somewhat overgrown riverside garden south of Starnberg, a garden with many old trees, with a boat hut, a small harbor, landing stage and bushes that allow models to pose unmolested by eavesdroppers. A nearby yacht club has harbor and clubhouse and there are countless boats with white sails on the blue-silver water at any time of the day. The splendor of the light on this lake is unique in only reasonably bright weather, the distant view with the pale blue wreath of the Alps enchanting, and the mountain silhouette, completed by the characterful massif of Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze [..]. No place more suitable for Edward Cucuel's work." (quoted from: Fritz von Ostini, Der Maler Edward Cucuel, Zurich et al. 1924, pp. 35f.). Our work shows one of his models lost in thought in white, airy summer clothes, surrounded by the intense blue-green of the lush vegetation and the bright flowers in the background. It conveys the warmth, idleness and lightness of that carefree time. During the winter months, Cucuel from time to time stayed in New York and was forced to turn his back on Germany for good at the beginning of the war in 1939. He settled again in sunny California in Pasadena, where he lived in seclusion until his death. [KT]