Boats and children on the beach

The National Gallery in Athens will not give this beach a single year. Its catalogue says about 1869 to 1875, a six-year window, and the number on the back, K.215, says something else worth knowing: the K stands for Koutlidis. The painting belongs to the collection assembled by the Koutlidis Foundation, one of the great private gatherings of 19th-century Greek art, which is why so much of the century's painting in Athens carries that letter.

Those were the years when Greek shores still worked entirely under sail. Hulls were hauled up on the shingle because that was the only way to get at them, for tarring, caulking and patching, and a beach with boats on it was a workplace. The children in the title are where children always were in such a place, underfoot among the keels.

It is a small painting, 30 by 60 centimetres of oil on canvas, and the year on the label here, 1872, is simply the middle of the gallery's six-year range.