Brown wooden board, not the best quality with a small, chamfered edge the entire way around the painting, besides the one side which has a much larger chamfered edge. It has not been prepared with any ochre washes Munnings commonly used. There is nothing written on the back of the board, apart from some small indistinguishable pencil marks. We do not know where the title, ‘Tug on the Water’ came from whether Munnings wrote this, or it is just descriptive of the scene. The oil painting study depicts a small tugboat(?) moored against a dock to the left of the study, on what is clearly a river. The colours are very muted and are restricted to mostly browns, greys, and the occasional highlight of blue or copper on the boat itself. In the background there are some lightly painted buildings which have a very industrial look to them, this tells us it was most likely not painted in East Anglia, more somewhere with industry like the Thames in London.