The beach at Pourville

Conder spent the summer of 1895 in Dieppe in the company of Blanche, Beardsley, Dujardin, the Halévys and the Thaulows at their fashionable villas on the rue Alexandre Dumas.

' "All summer he painted like a madman" said Blanche. The sense of the plenitude of his powers, as an intimation, that grew more insistent year by year thereafter, of an early death, gave him a demoniac energy – he was always at it. … The painting of imaginary scenes on silk was what chiefly occupied his time, and by now he had come to prefer the fan shape above all others, feeling that it offered the fullest scope for his particular gifts of colour and composition. In addition, although he made no notes or very few from nature, he painted in oil and watercolour a number of beach scenes with figures – always a favourite subject.’ (J. Rothenstein, op. cit., pp.119-122).