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In her analysis of O'Keeffe's 1936 composition, Balge-Crozier also discusses the relevance of the American late 19th-century "trophy paintings" of artists like [[William Michael Harnett]] and his followers. Specifically, she references Harnett's 1885 composition titled ''After the Hunt'' which includes [[trompe-l'œil]] representations of "dead game" against [[weapon]]s, a [[Horn (instrument)|horn]], and other objects commonly associated with [[Hunting in the United States|American hunting traditions]].<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=64}} At the same time, Balge-Crozier notes that trompe-l'oeil—a tradition of painting in which the artist depicts objects with the highest degree of [[verisimilitude]] so as to deceive the viewer into thinking the painted space is real—was not well suited to evoke the emotional response O'Keeffe "hoped for in the dialogue between nature and art".<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=65}}
Discussing possible 20th-century inspirations, art historian Sasha Nicholas notes that ''Summer Days'' demonstrates O'Keeffe's "awareness of the incongruous aesthetic juxtapositions" present in the work of contemporary [[Surrealism|Surrealist]] artists in the United States and Europe.<ref name=":3" />{{Rp|page=288}} The influence of Surrealism in ''Summer Days'' is also noted by scholar Henry W. Peacock who finds a parallel between the visual components of O'Keeffe's 1936 painting and the "[[Illusionism (art)|illusionistic]] and diminutive positive form floating in deep space" typical of some Surrealist paintings.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Peacock |first=Henry W. |title=Art as Expression |publisher=Whalesback Books |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-929590-14-1 |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=144 |language=en}}</ref> Predating Surrealism, Whitaker points to O'Keeffe's long-standing interest in 19th-century [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolist]] art which had to do with "suggestion, allusion, and equivalence", indicating that the artist was sympathetic to the Symbolist belief in the "curative" properties of form and color.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|page=194}}
When commenting on O'Keeffe's use of flowers in the composition, a very popular subject matter in her work, Peters speculates that the largest red flower, which she identifies as an [[Castilleja|Indian paintbrush]], might be a "cryptic abstract portrait" of Stieglitz. She notes that creating [[Abstract art|non-representational]] [[portrait]]s of other artists was encouraged and practiced in Stieglitz's New York circle, to which O'Keeffe belonged.<ref name=":1" />{{Rp|page=195}} Scholar and political scientist [[Timothy Luke|Timothy W. Luke]] argues that the artist's juxtaposition of skeletal imagery from the desert and flowers against the landscape of the [[Cerro Pedernal]] [[mesa]] or [[Abiquiú, New Mexico|Abiquiu]] hills in New Mexico, evident in ''Summer Days'' and other compositions from that period, "directly tap into the mass culture's utopian vision of the West" already cultivated in numerous American literary works and movies made between the 1920s and 1950s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Luke |first=Timothy W. |title=Shows of Force. Power, Politics, and Ideology in Art Exhibitions |publisher=Duke University Press |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-8223-1123-2 |location=Durham, North Carolina |pages=75 |language=en |chapter=Georgia O'Keeffe}}</ref>
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