This painting belongs to a series of landscapes produced in the summer of 1903 in the vicinity of the town of Arques-la-Bataille, about 10 kilometres from Dieppe. In Vallotton's record book the series of 17 landscapes is listed under number 508.

There is something toy-like in the composition of this work, one of the artist's finest paintings which was painted in the studio from a pencil drawing. Close kin to the decorative landscapes that Denis and other Nabis had produced back in the 1890s, this painting clearly shows the real-life view being stylized in imitation of Japanese art. Vallotton could easily have found a similar way of treating eddying water and the outlines of trees in the woodblock prints of the Japanese artist Hokusai.