The Fossil Hunters is a dark, monochromatic scene depicting an old man and a young woman asleep in an ambiguous setting amid draperies and rocks.

A few trilobites are included, the Beethoven mask lies on a large brachiopod,[4] and the corner of a photograph of a fossil is visible under the man's right elbow.

The picture was unnamed in his letters or journals until after he had read a history of men who had developed vaccines to combat debilitating diseases, Microbe Hunters,[5] including tuberculosis, which killed his mother.

[7] Remarkable, however, is the absence of any detail in this painting inviting association with the properties Proust singled out in the cited passage as the bearers of "the vast structure of recollection": "the smell and taste of things".

Ward agrees, pointing to the woman apparently emerging from a void in the rocky cliff (in the preferred birth orientation, head first) through the drawn-back curtains.

Although it matches the rocks in value and hue, its spherical shape, reinforced by its cast shadow, and the suggestion of a nipple, make the metaphor clear.

Dickinson described the two reclining figures as sleeping,[10] which suggests that the scene may be dreamed by the old man, who imagines himself as asleep on his mother's body, comforted by the memories of loved ones.

Ward suggests that a specific dream Dickinson described in a letter may also explain an important part of the painting's meaning, particularly because he seems to have been reminded of it by the topic he had just been discussing.