Through the liberal application of white heightening, the scene appears bathed in sunlight and filled with a warmth and an intimacy which is characteristic of many of Homer’s paintings and drawings of the mid-seventies.

—Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Standish D. Lawder, and Charles W. Talbot, Jr., Drawings from the Clark Art Institute, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 1:138, no. 332.