Cowie studied at Glasgow School of Art. After the war he taught at Bellshill Academy, near Glasgow. This comparatively early painting, executed when Cowie was about forty years old, shows three of the students. It is thinly painted and the brushstrokes are plainly visible: his later work was more meticulous still. Cowie’s approach to painting was painstaking: this painting would have been preceded by many drawings, done indoors in his studio. The background shows the farm buildings where Cowie was brought up at Netherton of Delgaty, near Cuminestown in Aberdeenshire. The title, meaning 'Summer has Arrived', is taken from a thirteenth-century rota, known as one of the earliest musical compositions in existence.