This perfect midsummer scene, with its dark, glossy trees and sunny lawn (left), is the product of a Scottish-born painter named John Williamson, who began his career in the 1840s decorating window shades. Williamson spent most of his life in Brooklyn, but he traveled all over the Northeast, and the majority of his pictures are rural scenes of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. He was particularly fond of the Hudson River, and it was from an estate overlooking the Tappan Zee that he made this fresh and oddly modern-looking painting in 1875.