The Pacific Ocean is a recurring subject in Brandt’s work, usually in images contrasting the sea and shore. Summer at 29th Street is somewhat different. For Brandt "the first glimpse of the sea and the smell and sound [of it] are so important to an inland-raised boy." Summer at 29th Street is the view of the ocean first seen by the artist as he walked down the street from the railroad tracks in Newport Beach, California. A restricted palette of blues and browns evokes the scent and sound of the ocean. The serene composition is disturbed by the ominous shape of a patrol blimp, a reminder of the threat of attack during World War II, when the scene was painted. While studying at Berkeley, Brandt became interested in Chinese landscape painting and the watercolors of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). In Summer at 29th Street the thin washes and exposed paper owe a debt to Cézanne while the shorthand use of light and dark to delineate the buildings and automobiles recalls the abbreviated brushwork of oriental landscape painting. Brandt considers the wet-into-wet method, which produces a slightly out-of-focus effect, the most exciting watercolor technique. He used it here in the sky and the railroad tracks in the foreground, which is most unusual since the technique is rarely used in detailed, descriptive passages.