"Look how the artist used white paint to represent the clouds in the sky. Traditionally in watercolor painting, white is represented by the way gaps in the wash expose the white paper. Ted's use of white watercolor paint was criticized. But this beach -- that hangs on the wall in his deserted studio -- is not a beach that I have ever seen."

"My French colleague thinks it is Utah Beach in Normandy about the time when he played there as a child -- a decade or so after D-Day."

"As on this picture, Ted always obscured his signature," Susanna observed. "But once I watched him frame a painting of the ocean and the horizon at a Marin beach where in December 1941 we went together. Under the brown paper on the back, he put a photograph of the two of us together at the place of the painting. He sealed the edges of the back with paste and gave me the painting. I still have it."

Caydance took the painting of Utah Beach down from the wall, turned it over. "I could remove the paper and then replace it. I know how to do this."