Rose often painted California coastal views, many around Carmel, and depicted the variety of weather conditions of the region. Carmel Dunes conveys the solitude of empty sand dunes and the power of nature. The sky is filled with a brilliant, almost glaring light, and the colors highly saturated. Rose delineated the wiry shrubbery in the foreground with an impasto, but the view reads as a series of barely overlapping planes in a two-dimensional arrangement.
The painting entered the museum with the title of Carmel Coast.
