Lympstone, Low Tide looks along the waterfront of the Devon village with the tide out and the harbour bed exposed across the foreground. To the left, a terrace of tall houses runs down towards the shore, lit warm against the sky, with dark windows, chimneys and railings picked out along the fronts. Lines of washing are strung between poles at the water's edge, and small figures stand on the foreshore beside the boats. Several small craft, some in teal and green, sit grounded on the mud, with a further boat drawn up at the lower right and the masts of moored vessels ranged across the middle distance. A dark headland closes the view on the far side of the estuary, beneath an orange sky whose colour is carried down into the wet ground below.

Lympstone sits on the east bank of the River Exe estuary in Devon, a village whose riverside houses back directly onto the foreshore without a continuous sea wall. It has a long tradition of residents drying washing on the foreshore, which the lines of washing in the painting record. Born in Kent in 1957, Mike Bernard studied at the West Surrey College of Art and Design and at the Royal Academy Schools, and was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in 1997. He moved to Devon in 2008, and the harbours and estuary villages of the South West have since become recurring subjects in his work.