As Alexander Wyant established himself as a New York City artist, his paintings would gradually grow to display the more experimental approaches of the great French Barbizon masters whom he had encountered on his 1860s European voyages. Summer Silence is a clear example of this influence, with its looser brushwork and atmospheric play on lights and shadows. First handled by Vose Galleries in the 1920s, the painting was illustrated on the cover of a gallery brochure announcing recent acquisitions. In response to a client’s inquiry about the landscape, Robert C. Vose writes in a January, 1929 letter, “The Wyant shown on the cover of our little announcement is one of the greatest landscapes I have ever owned, the finest Wyant I ever owned and one of the finest in existence…The quality is superb.” He goes on, “This great picture was in the collection of the late George H. Hearn, one of the greatest collections of American Art ever formed. Most of his pictures he gave to the Metropolitan Museum, including a splendid group of Wyants, but this one, the best, he kept for himself, and bequeathed to his [daughter-in-law], from whose collection it comes.”

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