The painting shows the artist's young cousins, the twins Nina and Cecil, on a summer's outing down a river. Their blue and white clothes, the greens of the vegetation and the landscape in the background are captured in loose brushstrokes, creating a fresh, en plein-air atmosphere.

Munnings wrote: 'With these two as models, I was full of ideas, and put them in a boat ... and made them row me down the mill-stream ... until we came to shallows and clumps of dark green rushes with brown heads ... Then bright green sedges thrust against the bows and the boy and girl began to lift an oar and push or pull it through the row-lock. Watching this, I saw my picture, my arrangement, just as they were!'

The artist was associated with the Newlyn School of Painters and was later elected president of the Royal Academy.