This painting by William Page Atkinson Wells depicts mussel gathering at Sunderland Point, one of the largest mussel beds on the Lancashire coast.

Wells lived at Sunderland Point and was familiar with this traditional local occupation. The mussel gatherers are shown wearing gloves to prevent their hands being cut by the shells and using small two-pronged forks to scrape the mussels away from the stones. The contents of the baskets were transferred to sacks which were then loaded on horse-drawn carts for the market.

The Lancashire coast has always been an abundant source of seafood, particularly noted for cockles, shrimps and mussels which have been gathered by hand on the seacoast for generations. "Working the sands" on foot with horse and cart continued in the area as late as the 1960s and it was a defining feature of Lancashire's coastal heritage. As well as gathering seafood on foot, Lancashire coastal communities have earned their livelihoods from fishing, sea faring and trade for centuries. Since the 1970s many of these industries have been in decline from the deep-sea trawlers based at Fleetwood to the cockle pickers of Morecambe.

This painting was purchased with assistance from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the National Art Collections Fund.