As a landscape painter, Marsden Hartley was greatly influenced by the transcendentalist writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who perceived natural symbols as mediators that could connect sensitive viewers to the spiritual realm. Referencing a famous "Self-Portrait" (1500) by Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, Hartley wrote, “I would like to make a painting of a mountain and have it have all that this portrait has.”

Like Paul Cézanne’s famous painted “portraits” of Monte Saint-Victoire in southern France, Hartley’s "The Summer Camp, Blue Mountain" is one of a series of paintings depicting seasonal changes at a site near his residence in North Lovell, Maine. The dominant blue color appears to represent both a cold fall/winter landscape and perhaps also carry spiritual associations. In 1909, this series prompted the art dealer and photographer Alfred Stieglitz to give Hartley his first solo exhibition at the 291 gallery in New York City.