Likely depicting Seaside Goldenrod, (Solidago sempervirens) this abstract study of a rocky shoreline was done late in the artists career at Pemaquid, in Maine. It bears a deaccessioned label from the Providence Art Club of Rhode Island on the frame verso backing.

Edith Clifford Williams (1885–1971) was an early pioneer in the American abstract art movement. She was part of the circle that gathered around the photographer and modern art promoter Alfred Stieglitz. She was also a long-time confidante of Hu Shih (1891–1962), who was arguably the most prominent Chinese intellectual in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Ithaca, New York, Williams—who preferred to be known as Clifford—spent most of her girlhood in New Haven, Connecticut, where her father, Henry Shaler Williams, taught geology and paleontology at Yale University. After studying with the painter John Henry Twachtman and at Yale’s School of the Fine Arts, she traveled to Europe, and was enrolled briefly at the Académie Julian in Paris.