This to my mind is a beautiful watercolour, full of richness and showing an age old situation - STALKING. The young people sitting are unware that they are being spied upon. But not just spied upon but glared at with an expression that is charged with emotion. Its for the viewer to decide which but certainly its not with positivity, and does the negativity belong to the face projecting it or is it aimed at the young man and woman sitting by the beach. In order to decide you have to know that this painting was inspired by the narrative poem of Lord Alfred Tennyson called "Enoch Arden". It is the story of a man who takes to sea to earn a proper living so that he can support his wife and children. He himself becomes shipwrecked on a desert island. He manages to get off the island and return home after many years only to find out the following, his best mate shacked up with his wife, one of his own children died, and his wife had a new child by his best friend. Its an age old story and has been compared to Homer's Odyssey and the plight of Odysseus. The protaganist Enoch, never lets his identity known to his family or wife and eventually dies of a broken heart. That story itself engages emotionally challenging questions affecting the human condition, such as one has to accept when other people move on, and that people do move on. The ones that dont remain marooned on that emotive desert island until they wither constantly stalking their past. This painting if you look at it without knowing the story upon which it was based, might be viewed by you in an entirely different vein. But if you do take in the background story context, who do these characters become, are the young people sitting Enoch Arden's children, and does he spy on them? Or is it the best friend of Enoch Arden avariciously yearning for his wife, life family?
(The other reason I like this painting is that the artist was a local to my borough and bears the name of Kilburn where I live. Kilburne the artist actually lived in Hampstead, which is close enough, to my beloved Kilburn which is actually part of the Roman Road of Watling street. Kilburn was also a celtic settlement and prounounce Cylebourne, because the river Bourne ran through it, but centuries ago the civil engineers re-directed the river to flow underground, but beneath our feet in Kilburn runs a river!)
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