This work depicts the ragged skyline of white pines at the west end of Basswood Bay in rural Minnesota, where Duchamp visited Frank Brookes Hubachek (the brother of his longtime companion Mary Reynolds) in the summer of 1953. Working without artist's materials, Duchamp created Moonlight on the Bay at Basswood on the blotter of a correspondence pad, using a fountain pen and pencil for the trees and shadows, a yellow crayon for the moon and its reflection, and talcum powder for the bay's white mists. Perhaps most ingeniously, he shaded in the heavy brown shadows in the pine trees with a chocolate bar.