La Plage — Alfred Stevens Beach Postcard

Under a pale, clouded sky, a woman in black with a red-flowered hat sits on a grassy dune, a closed red parasol resting in her lap, her gaze fixed on the sea. A light-coated terrier waits beside her chair, while a child crosses the sand and bathers move through the surf in the distance.

Signed “A. Stevens,” the scene has the loose, sketch-like touch of a plein-air study — the artist working outdoors rather than in a Paris interior, catching the grey coastal light he painted at Ostend and in Normandy.

Mail it to someone who’d rather be watching the tide than anywhere else this evening.