Summer is a time for joy, carefree abandon and quiet contemplation, as these evocative artworks show. But don’t ask me why so many of them are nudes. Let’s just blame the heat.

Edouard Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863)

“Oh hello there, are you intrigued by our little soiree?“: Edouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863)

Hmm, what have we stumbled upon here? Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass is the epitome of a carefree summer, mid-afternoon skinny-dip included. This friendly gang has found their own shady spot in the forest: the dapper men are chatting about the latest Paris Saint-Germain game; the women are free and naked and looking at us like, “Oh, hello there. Are you intrigued by our little soiree?” ; and the grapes, figs and rosetta bread rolls have spilled onto the dirt and no one’s even annoyed. I wish I was this chill.

Joaquin Sorolla, El Balandrito (1909)

Sorry kid, that boat’s about to sail off into the Mediterranean: Joaquin Sorolla’s El Balandrito (1909)

No one understands the glory of summer like a child, sailboat in hand, turning the ocean’s shallows into their personal sandpit. In The Little Sailboat, the gentle lashings of Sorolla’s brush, with the sun lapping so serenely off the Mediterranean, drives home the unvarnished innocence of this whole scene. This kid’s in a world of his own, at least until his sailboat’s inevitably taken by the tides, and then the real waterworks start.

Henri Rousseau, The Dream (1910)

Henri Rousseau’s The Dream (1910): Look, you’d be naked too.

The lounging nude in Rousseau’s The Dream is all of us, sweltering through 40-degree days in our stuffy apartments, hallucinating the cool allure of a tropical rainforest. Beyond the bug-eyed tigers and pre-woke snake charmers, you can still feel the humidity emanating from Rousseau’s fantasy, the cicadas singing, the mosquitoes biting, maybe even the sound of a waterfall gushing in the distance. Put on Nick Leon’s A Tropical Entropy, stare deeply, and fade away.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Summer Days (1936)

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Summer Days (1936): Because summer can be decay, too.

Georgia O’Keeffe, mystic chronicler of the dusky desert heat of the US’s southwest, is not pussyfooting around when it comes to summertime. That flesh-eaten skull in Summer Days – hovering symbolically over ripe flowers, blue skies and red-hot mountains – is your reminder to slip, slop, slap.

Max Dupain, Sunbaker (1938)

Tanned like a Real Housewife: Max Dupain’s Sunbaker (1938)

It’s been called Australia’s best-known photograph, and its subject evokes summer better than every Instagram shot of an Aperol spritz-at-sunset combined: it’s the mythical bronzed Aussie, skin glistening with lotion, sweat and seawater. Even in high contrast B&W, you can tell this guy’s tanned like a Real Housewife. And he’s rugged, too: he’s not even lying on a towel, let alone under a beach cabana. Just a face full of golden sand, the true taste of summer.

Edward Hopper, Rooms by the Sea (1951)

Summertime sadness: Edward Hopper’s Rooms by the Sea (1951)

It seems Edward Hopper didn’t just paint pictures of lonely salesmen and housewives eating steak-‘n’-eggs at sad diners. His loneliness extended to summer, as in the evocative Rooms by the Sea. The sun pouring through the front door is warm and tactile, but a more pressing question: is this home just hovering over the ocean? There doesn’t appear to be a porch or even a staircase. One step out that door and you’re plummeting to the bottom of the sea. And you thought your summer AirBnb was just a “short stroll” to the beach.

Willem de Kooning, Villa Borghese (1960)

It’s the Italian countryside, duh: Willem de Kooning’s Villa Borghese (1960)

I once traipsed through a de Kooning retrospective at MOMA in New York thinking “I don’t get this at all, I’m the dumbest boy alive!” And then, at some point, it clicked: you need to look at de Kooning like you’re reading a Richard Scarry children’s book that fell in the bathtub, or like you’re looking out a plane window after you just woke up from a six-hour nap. With just a few vicious horizontal swipes of blue and green, and some vertical lashings of yellow and white, he’s somehow conjured up summer in the Italian countryside. Pass me a limoncello spritz!

Agnes Martin, Summer (1964)

Calm, meditative, restorative: Agnes Martin’s Summer.

There’s a meditative calm in Agnes Martin’s watercoloured grid that you might optimistically call the promise of summer. In the midst of the hectic holiday season, summer doesn’t feel quite like this yet: instead, it’s red and spiky, like the Mall Santa you forced your kids to pose with. But as soon as the parties are done, Martin’s blue squares is the mood we want to dive into.

David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972)

The prince of pool paintings: David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972)

Out of all the pool paintings David Hockney’s done, this is the one that feels the most inviting. The way the sunlight ripples through that blue makes me want to grab my floaties and cannonball. Less inviting? Having your unimpressed partner, all dressed up in their finest pastels, hovering over the end of the pool and yelling: “Why are you still in there? We have to be at dinner in 10 minutes!”

Sally Robinson, Beach Crossing (1976)

Time for a Calippo: Sally Robinson’s Beach Crossing (1976).

Almost as much as Max Dupain’s Sunbaker, Sally Robinson’s Beach Crossing conjures the typical Australian summer in hyperreal nostalgia. Specifically, it’s the trek back from the beach to the local convenience store for a post-swim Calippo. Fifty years on, the only thing that’s changed is the aesthetics: this picture’s so ’70s, I can hear Bon Scott-era AC/DC blaring from someone’s station wagon. But everyone knows today’s best beach soundtrack is Bad Bunny.

Wolfgang Tillmans, Lutz, Alex, Suzanne & Christoph on beach (1993)

Stacks on for summer: Wolfgang Tillmans’ Lutz, Alex, Suzanne & Christoph on beach (1993)

The military uniforms are disconcerting, but I think I know what’s up in this very ’90s Tillmans photo: it’s just a bunch of Joe Strummer-idolising German punks huddled on the beach in a post-hangover spill (the polyamorous affection suggests MDMA might’ve been involved, too). May your summer be spent in such tender oblivion.

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