Even in later years, Pechstein revisited the idea of confronting the sea with artistic powers in drawings and paintings. With "Boot bei aufgehender Sonne" Pechstein 'portrayed' a rowing boat equipped with landing nets and all kinds of fishing utensils lying calmly and lonely on the sand, ready to go; it just has to be pushed over the sand into the water. The painting manner that he developed in Ückeritz on the island of Usedom in August and September 1949 seems to reflect the overall atmosphere of the reconstruction of post-war Berlin. In 1945, Pechstein returned to Berlin from the former Pomeranian, now Polish village of Leba. After a short imprisonment, he not only faced the ruins of his bombed-out studio, the loss of pictures destroyed during the war, but also the loss of his livelihood through the National Socialist’s cultural policies. Pechstein's art was no longer visible in public, it was non-existent. He managed to get a new start with the appointment to teach at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin under the direction of Carl Hofer. With his first summer stay by the sea in 1949, Pechstein felt that his strength was coming back, he was able to connect emotionally to his stays on the Curonian Spit. Nevertheless, Usedom cannot be compared with the epic simpleness and primeval expanse of the East Prussian peninsula. But the loss brought him closer to his own world, closer to Europe, also by returning to the life of a painter in this small place on the sheltered coast. The youthful character of Pechstein's style can thus be recognized in this painting, comparable to the moods that once characterized his works made in Nida. Pechstein's typical color worlds glow and sparkle in this painting, which embrace and intertwine as if they were of their own accord, in order to ennoble the beauty of the motif. In their mixtures, they unfold the intensive, artistic examination of van Gogh and the Fauves around Matisse, whose works Pechstein studied attentively in Paris in 1908 and which had left a deep impression as 'possibilities of artistic expression'. Executed with a lively brushwork, Pechstein's "Boot mit aufgehender Sonne" compares to Maurice de Vlaminck's paintings made on the Seine near Chatou in 1905/1906 and to André Derain's paintings of the London Thames from the same period. In powerful contrast, the fishing boat lies on the sand in an unusual view from above, drawn in a few blackened blue colors with yellow and red contours.

Pechstein knows the type of boat, the curved shape and the volume of the heavy hull are familiar to him, with carefully placed brushstrokes, he makes its character recognizable and thus takes it out of the picture as a whole. The clear morning with a bright sun mitigates the impression of danger, and does not tell the observer anything about the hard life of the fishermen and their willingness to accept the challenges of the elements. We can well allege that Pechstein consciously staged a metaphorical exaggeration of the barge pulled ashore. He lived with the fishermen and villagers and set them a monument with this magnificent piece in radiant colors staged in a Baltic landscape. Throughout his life, Pechstein was fascinated by the mutability of the sea. After his return to Berlin from Paris, and with the discovery of the islands in the east, it found a magnificent expression in the artist's work. [MvL]