– The Peabody Essex Museum will present “Painting Summer in New England,” which opens April 22 and runs through September 4. The exhibition, curated by Trevor Fairbrother, takes a fresh look at the lively, lyrical and insightful ways in which painters have interpreted the special intersection of place and season in America’s northeast corner.

Marshaling an astonishing array of works – more than 100 paintings by 83 artists from the late 1850s to the present, including Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Andrew Wyeth, Stuart Davis, George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Lois Dodd, Alex Katz and Fairfield Porter – the exhibition aims to “delight, astound, and surprise,” says Dan Monroe, director and chief executive officer of the Peabody Essex Museum, “This wonderfully vibrant exhibition “invites us to explore the richness of imagery that can be understood as ‘New England’ as well as the remarkable range of expression that the term ‘painting’ encompasses.”

“Summer Evening,” 1886, Childe Hassam, oil on canvas, 12 1/8 by 20 3/8 inches; Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Conn., gift of the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company.

“Painting Summer in New England” is accompanied by anillustrated catalog written by Fairbrother and published by YaleUniversity Press (Spring 2006) in association with the PeabodyEssex Museum and Marquand Books.

It has nine thematic sections: Quiet Retreats, Sea and Shore, The Farm, Plant Life, Architecture, Streets and Gathering Places, Individuals, New England Nudes, and Coastal Light. These themes serve as “helpful gathering spots, rather than strict typologies,” notes Fairbrother. The catalog also includes a section on poetry, offered “in the same spirit of evoking and appreciating, rather than defining New England,” he adds.

The first generation of Nineteenth Century artists represented, among them John Frederick Kensett and Fitz Henry Lane, celebrated the atmospheric light of the rugged coast, while their peers George Inness and Thomas Worthington Whittredge depicted the bucolic delights of farms and fields. The influence of Impressionism is evident in turn-of-the-century works by Hassam, Sargent, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Lilian Westcott Hale and Edmund C. Tarbell.

Subsequent generations of the artists including Bellows, Hopper, Porter, John Sloan, Maurice Prendergast, Marsden Hartley, Marguerite Zorach, Stuart Davis, Andrew Wyeth, John Marin, Hans Hofmann, Alex Katz and Yvonne Jacquette have explored a multiplicity of styles, from realism to increasingly abstract arrangements of form and color.

“The Sand Dune,” circa 1871-72, Winslow Homer, oil on canvas, 13 by 21 inches; collection of Eleanor and C. Thomas May. Photo courtesy Adelson Galleries, New York City.

In addition to their aesthetic appeal, the works in “PaintingSummer New England” reveal the social and cultural preoccupationsof the period in which they were made. While many painters createdidealized images to appeal to an affluent, leisured class, some,such as Allan Rohan Crite, Jack Levine, and Beatrice Cuming,interpreted the ethnic and social diversity of the urbanenvironment with empathy and directness.

That the Peabody Essex Museum has orchestrated this project is altogether fitting, according to Monroe. Founded in 1799, the museum has played a seminal and ongoing role in preserving, promoting and interpreting New England’s art and culture as a critical part of the country’s legacy and vision. Today, the museum has recast and extended that role as it integrates historical and contemporary art to create a museum experience that forges connections between art and the world in which it was made. The museum is delighted to present so many preeminent artists, among them Salem’s native son Frank Weston Benson, whose iconic canvas, “Summer,” reminds us of the dynamic contributions of Boston’s North Shore to American painting.

The Peabody Essex Museum is at East India Square. For information, www.pem.org or 866-745- 1876.