A beach with sailing boats, early morning.

Carl Locher's 'A Beach with Sailing Boats, Early Morning' (1886) is an atmospheric coastal subject — the early morning at the beach capturing the specific quality of dawn light on the sea, the fishing boats preparing to depart or just returning from the night's work, and the particular stillness of the early hour before the day's activity fully began. The early morning beach was a subject that tested the painter's sensitivity to the specific quality of the day's first light — its cool blue quality gradually warming toward the full light of day.

Locher renders the early morning beach with attention to the specific atmospheric quality of the hour — the cool, pale light of dawn on the sea surface and the sandy beach, the shadows still long from the low sun angle, and the quality of the air that is different from the fully lit day. His handling of the sailing boats in this early morning light gives them the quality of forms still emerging from the night's relative darkness. The specific color temperature of morning light distinguishes the composition from his midday or evening marine subjects.