Summer was painted in 1905, the year that William Brymner and his AAM colleague Maurice Cullen built a studio at Saint-Eustache, northwest of Montreal. Brymner, in particular, was drawn to the red roofs of the rural dwellings and painted them a number of times, for example, in Saint-Eustache (1905, Musée nationale des beaux-arts du Québec), October (1906, The Mount Royal Club, Montreal), and Old Cottage, Saint-Eustache (c.1913, Art Gallery of Ontario). Saint-Eustache, Québec, a watercolour of the same year as Summer in the collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA), presents a similar view further downstream on the Rivière-du-Chêne. J.W. Morrice captured his friend’s love for the area in Une journée à Saint-Eustache (1910, MMFA), a rare portrait for Morrice, which depicts Brymner smoking his pipe and relaxing outdoors. Brymner returned repeatedly to Saint-Eustache to paint, primarily during the summer months when school was out, until about 1914.