Oyster Season, Sinepuxent Bay, Maryland, depicts the harvesting of oysters, a typical scene of late nineteenth century Maryland. This painting illustrates a post-Civil War practice in which oysters were harvested and then placed in barrels and sacks and transported by horse or ox-drawn wagons for distribution in cities between Baltimore and Pittsburgh. The scene depicted in this painting is in Worcester County in a bay that is now a state Wildlife Management Area in sight of Ocean City, Maryland.

During the 1860s and 1870s, Baltimore painter Arthur Quartley painted and exhibited numerous marine and genre scenes of the Chesapeake Bay, rivers, and others bodies of water in Maryland. Born in Paris, Quartley moved to Baltimore in 1862 to start an interior design firm. He worked in Baltimore as an interior designer until becoming a full-time painter in 1873.

This painting was bequeathed to the Peabody Institute as part of the John W. McCoy Collection. It is now owned by the state of Maryland as part of the Peabody Collection