Frith's later work is often somewhat anonymous in character, but in this study from 'The Gossiping Photographer at Hastings' he has captured the poetry of the Victorians' feeling for the seaside. As with William Dyce's 'Pegwell Bay' and the photographs of J. D. Llewelyn, the beach, the rocks (and here the 'cliff of receding terraces) seem to exist in their structured profusion only so that these solitary figures might take their pensive pleasures among them. We are reminded of Frederick Sommer's observation: 'life itself is not the reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles'.