The work is signed ‘Laura Johnson’ indicating that this is an early work by Dame Laura Knight, who moved to Staithes in 1897 and married Harold Knight in 1903. Thereafter, she ceased signing work under her maiden name of Johnson. The painting focuses on the everyday lives of the Staithes fishing community, as they sit and bait lines on the sea front. Knight’s own humble background led her to seek out unconventional subject matter, and prevented her from adhering to hierarchical class structures when choosing her sitters.

Knight’s time in Staithes was formative in her artistic development. Perhaps most crucially, the artist learnt the skills of careful observation, which aided her in sensitively capturing her models. This was a key skill that the artist utilised throughout her oeuvre. Knight comments in her autobiography, Oil Paint and Grease Paint, p. 75, 'It was [at Staithes] that I found myself and what I might do. The life and the place were what I yearned for - the freedom, the austerity, the savagery and the wildness. I loved it passionately, overwhelmingly; I loved the cold and the northerly storms when no covering would protect you.’

Knight generates a duality in her picture: in the melancholic and introverted fisherfolk, who are reminiscent of the characters in the Dutch master paintings that she admired, contrasted with the colourful and looser brushstrokes of the beach and background, which instead show her interest in French pointillism. In this picture, Knight presents herself as a masterful observer, and conjures up the atmosphere of Staithes at the turn of the century.

The painting is to be included in the catalogue raisonné of Dame Laura Knight currently being compiled by R John Croft FCA, the great-nephew of the artist.