Sea-Side Sketches--A Clam Bake

The contemporary account that accompanied this image related that “happy are they who can find leisure and opportunity to escape for a few hours from the restraints and heat and dust of the city for a run to the sea-side.” A late twentieth-century interpretation might note more serious reflections on mortality and survival in the image, in which the boys carrying the pail turn away in disgust from the dead fish in the foreground while those to the right prepare to eat their catch.