The scene is Flabury Rectory on the River Avon in Worcestershire where Sargent stayed with his family in the summer of 1889. it was a red-brick house described by Vernon Lee, one of the house guests, as "a grest big old-fashioned house, with lawn going down to the Avon: beautiful & so fresh & peacful."
There is a photographic quality to the image, as the focus shifts between thesharp foreground and the blurred background behind the veil of trees. The figures are carefully delineated and characterised. Sargent's younger sister Violet, wearinga black fur cape and green hat is seated in the bow of the punt at the far right (she wears the same clothes in a single-figure punting study, "Autumn on the River," Private Collection). The body language of the man lying back in the canoe with his right leg hooked over the side and one hand under his head almost certainly identifies him as Paul Helleu. The Helleus were certainly identifies him as Paul Helleus. The Helleus were certainly at Fladbury at the time and the young woman who is intent on keeping her balnce as she steps out of the rowing boat is probably Helleu's wife, Alice. An unidentified rather ghostly figure, stands on the terraced lawns behind the willow trees, holding two punting poles. Underlying geometric form is less pronounced than in "Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife", but there is structure to the picture, provided by the horizonalline of the red punt, the canoe and punt perpendicular to it and the delicate verticals of the trees and oars. The tapestry-like background, worked in small, broken brushstrokes in an autumnal palette, is reminiscent of Pissarro.
The picture was never exhibited and was in the artist's studio sale at Christie's as "Carlcot Mill, Near Reading: A Boating Party", but the location is certainly Fladbury.
