Born in Buffalo, New York, Edward Dufner enrolled in the Buffalo Art Student's League in 1871 and studied there for approximately three years. In 1893 he won an Albright Scholarship which enabled him to move to New York City to pursue art training at the Art Students League. Like other artists in his generation, Dufner went to Paris in 1898 to study, and he enrolled at the Academie Julian. During the five years he spent in Paris he studied with James A. M. Whistler, whose tonal works indeed influenced the young Dufner.

Returning to Buffalo in 1903, Dufner taught at that city's Art Students League until 1908 when he returned to New York City teaching at the League there until 1917. Around this time Duffier began to experiment with Impressionism, a style he developed for the rest of his career. He is best known for his Impressionist painting of sunny landscapes peopled with women and children reclined by a lake. From the second half of his career, the artist lived in New Jersey and was an active exhibitor at the major metropolitan institutions, including the American Watercolor Society, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design, and the Salmagundi Club.

Newark Museum Curator Gary A. Reynolds aptly describes Dufner's landscapes: "...Dufner's best pictures... exude a cozy sense of harmony between man and nature: both are beautiful and pristine in the bright summer's light. If not a deeply "spiritual" view of nature, it is nevertheless one that seeks to interpret its ideal moments." Midsummer Clouds is an excellent example of the type of work described. Here, man is shown enjoying the pleasures of sun and sea on a breezy summer day. The large body of water lined with houses and docks may be a depiction of the active summer community on Maine's Penobscot Bay.