Looking down over a calm harbor inlet, the eye follows the water as it recedes between wooded peninsulas and layered hills to hazy blue-violet mountains. At the right, white sailboats and motorboats are moored along a wooden pier beside white clapboard houses and a small red boathouse, while a single sailboat glides across the foreground. A large autumn maple branch and red-orange shrubs on a rocky ledge frame the left.

Warm, golden late-afternoon light shimmers in reflections of foliage, sails and houses on the water. Dabbed brushwork in the leaves, thick impasto in the clouds and smoothly blended water and sky give the scene a serene, nostalgic, classic Americana feel.