Ethel Carrick and her husband, the artist E Phillips Fox, spent the summer of 1909 at the beach resort towns of Trouville and Deauville in the north of France, where Carrick produced a number of delightful paintings of prosperous holiday-makers. They crowd the promenade and seashore in full dress, replete with picture hats and straw boaters. As art historian Mary Eagle has observed, in these paintings ‘life is orderly, holidays are occasions for dressing well, the children smile and stay in place, the sun shines'.
Characteristically for Carrick Fox, the foreground is left bare, with lilac shadows. The action is focused on the middle ground, where a woman in white is captured in a few quick flourishes of paint, blending in to the white sand, accompanied by a dapper male companion. Carrick would often depict her subjects in the act of observing what was happening around them, and in the centre of the painting a crowd huddles in front of a red-and-white striped beach tent, the contents of which remain a mystery to the viewer.
