An overcast humid sky is reflected in broad Beaumaris Bay so that air and water harmonise tonally with both the pebbly foreground shore and the clay cliffs of Mentone in the background. Despite the title, the location is not exactly Mentone; rather, it is immediately below the former farm cottage that Roberts and his friends rented from farmer Moysey.

Accents of pure white dance along a left-to-right rising diagonal, from a seated woman whose gaze controls the composition, across a central group greeting a boating party, to terminate at a strict triangle, the sail of a becalmed boat. It is a magical, complex composition in which everything sings.