Exhibiting the "sad Hawthorne stare" which became a characteristic element in the figural work by the artist, the subject evokes a pathos that was easily grasped during wartime years, and was also all too familiar to the families of Provincetown fishermen, who frequently lost loved ones to the sea. A flag flies at half-mast over the square sails of the boats in the harbor. Desolate in her bereavement, a young mother clasps her baby close.