In the summer of 1889, Elizabeth Nourse traveled with her sister Louise and their Cincinnati friend Anna Schmidt around northern France. It was a bitterly cold day when Nourse painted this scene, and Anna later wrote: “I was with Elizabeth when she painted that girl on the Etaples Dunes---it was so cold and windy the model used to weep.” The model’s pink cheeks and limbs suggest the discomfort of the blustery coastal air that particular day.