This is not to say the town need be small. America conceals immense things. Here are thousands of busy souls as untangent to you as individual rocks on the moon. It forms part of an ensemble of three oils and two gouache studies focusing on two men at leisure in an outdoor swimming pool, and a conspicuous feature of this series is the close space of the canvas image. There is nothing to suggest a world existing beyond the canvas edge, and within the image neither acknowledges the other's presence.
Leisure resides within the individual.
The shimmering water which is the image's matrix unifies a canvas field, but isolates a human archipelago. The adept rendering of the water, ripples and reflections subtly ringing about the human forms and the canvas centerpoint, creates a movement and visual interest which strongly underscores the withdrawn quietude of the men. In the Willard Pool set, Fisher shows skill in using foreshortening of the figures, particularly as a surrogate for an unseen perspective. Here, a flight of steps at right leads up toward the viewer, and a descending flight points left. The exacting perspective of this stair landing converges toward the panel center.