In the mid-1930s Dorothea Sharp was celebrated as ‘one of England’s greatest living woman painters’. It was further noted by Harold Sawkins, the Editor of The Artist Magazine, that her paintings were ‘Full of sunshine and luscious colour, her work always lively, harmonious and tremendously exhilarating ...  Rollicking children bathed in strong sunlight; her subjects appeal because they are based on the joy of life”. Taking a Dip is certainly a wonderful evocation of this joie de vivre and the artist's love of sunlight and natural colour. Sharp exudes confidence and spontaneity in her brushwork. Her paintings are never laboured, the paint always deftly brushed or dabbed straight from the palette onto her canvas or panel. She paints rapidly; a heavily loaded brush of pure colour applied boldly and resisting any blending or muddying of brushstrokes on the substrate. Her training at Academie Colarossi in Montparnasse under Claudio Castaluchio and the influence of the work of the French Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, are clear. In Taking a Dip Sharp has intentionally left the panel bare between some brush stokes. This is an integral part of the painting and a means of achieving a sense of depth and shadow, and movement in the water. Taking a Dip is a lovely example of Dorothea Sharp's St Ives works; a happy echo from a peaceful wartime interlude in the 1920s - early 1930s, and a visual tonic today.