Kinlochbervie is a small fishing village in the north-west of Scotland. As in many of Bellany’s early paintings, this work combines sea and religious imagery. The fish gutters in the foreground are in a ‘Last Supper’ arrangement and a figure at the top right carries a yoke which gives him the appearance of being crucified. It is one of the first paintings in which Bellany shows a single boat with fishermen outlined against a clear sky. The boat is used symbolically to represent a conveyor of human fate like the mythical boat used to ferry the dead across the river Styx to Hades.