Michael planned for this piece to be a large "preliminary" to a new work in his Passage series that he would paint in oils.

He doesn't usually use models; he prefers to create a person who fits exactly into his scene and he always paints alone, but he wanted the design of the robe on the sand to suggest the drawing of water back into the sea. To get the correct fall of the fabric, he had a model pose in his studio while he painted and the "preliminary" became the finished work.