Our Watering-Places—Views at Long Branch

Just months after Appomattox, Nast turned his eye to leisure, producing this six-panel plate documenting the summer resort at Long Branch, New Jersey. Panels are captioned Arriving, Montague and Capulet, Music on the [Beach], Evening in [the Hotel], and an untitled central beach panorama. The largest scene crowds the sand with Victorian bathers in full dress—women in enormous dark skirts, men in frock coats, parasols raised against the Atlantic glare; changing-house cabins line a bluff behind them. Arriving shows a well-dressed party disembarking, dog in tow. Montague and Capulet suggests two families forced into comic proximity by resort proximity. This plate reads as social comedy of the Northern middle class at a summer resort.