Description

The New York Times described it appreciatively:

'It is a study of landscape, in which water and sky form the chief part and the foreground is neglected. The sky is very lovely, and the water, on which the eye plunges from a height, is full of suggestions of spaciousness and living quality.' 1

Thomas Frost in a letter to the New York Tribune added a further comment:

'I observed only three straight lines in foreground - I should say, the bottom of the paper, and a little flake white which apparently had been spat upon the "distance."… [a] blot of burnt umber to the north ...'. 2

A number of watercolour beach scenes and seascapes painted in Dieppe in the mid-1880s are taken from a high viewpoint, including The Seashore [M.1031] and and The Opal Sea [M.1041]. Two similar studies, Note in opal - The Sands, Dieppe [M.1033] and Caprice in blue and silver - Dieppe [M.1034], were already owned by E. W. Hooper of Boston. None correspond to the admittedly brief descriptions.