Although she also produced commissioned portraits, still lifes, and interiors, Beatrice Whitney Van Ness was recognized primarily for her brightly colored outdoor scenes featuring friends and family members. Summer Sunlight, a typical example, was painted during a summer sojourn in Maine. It depicts the artist's older daughter (wearing a broad-brimmed hat), her nephew, Winthrop Stearns (with his back to us), and Barbara Allen, a neighbor.

However, as indicated by the title, the true subject of this painting is light itself and the artist's fascination with the colors it brings out in flesh, fabrics, and landscape. The continuing influence of impressionism can be seen in the broad brushwork and bright palette, along with the momentary nature of Allen's gesture as she proffers a banana, the unusual cropping (so that Stearns's right arm and one whole side of the standing figure are cut off), and the dramatic way the sunlight glances off Allen's beach robe. The strong diagonal created by the vivid orange umbrella adds dynamism to the scene, as does Stearns's hair, tousled by the sea breeze.

Many painted beach scenes are purely hedonistic, reveling in the sensual pleasures of sunlight, sand, and exposed skin; others, such as those painted by Winslow Homer, can be darkly dramatic. Some scholarship has placed Summer Sunlight in a third category of beach pictures that emphasize the sense of psychological isolation within each of the figures, despite their physical proximity.