One is balancing on the pointed stones of a rock, the other is sitting in a white rowing boat with a light green coat of paint just above the water edge.

[1][3] Catherine Dinn states: "Although Henry Scott Tuke would put extra details and the finishing touches to his bathing paintings in the studio, photographic evidence exists to demonstrate that he worked on these canvases largely in the open air, accounting for their freshness of colour and the sparkling effects of sunlight on the sea and the naked flesh of his models.

Tuke recorded the topography of this picturesque beach so faithfully in his paintings that it is usually possible to identify the exact rocks depicted.

[1] Of the models shown in the painting Gleaming waters, also the bare chested boy in the white trousers, turning his back to the audience, and holding his pinkish shirt in his hands, can be identified.

Henry Scott Tuke also captured this motif as an individual portrait in 1910, titled Preparing to bathe.

Catherine Wallace points out: "This dynamic oil of Tuke's boat-keeper, Charlie Mitchell, was painted in the summer of 1910 on Newporth beach, Falmouth.

[5][6] The use of a distinct jarring colour note as the fulcrum of chromatic organisation, such as the red jersey in the painting Ruby, Gold and Malachite (1901) or the pinkish shirt in Gleaming waters, could be compared with the practice of artists such as James McNeill Whistler and Albert Joseph Moore.

All of Tuke's regular models were eventually called up during World War I, and some were never to return, including Maurice Clift, who is visible in Gleaming waters, and who died of his wounds in France.

[1] "Henry Scott Tuke continued to produce bathing subjects until the end of his life, but was aware that by the 1920s these paintings were perceived as anachronistic and repetitious.