The practice of this painter from Valencia reached a high level of modernism and painterly quality yet without ever relinquishing figuration, leaving behind the prevailing bias towards the aesthetic dictatorship of Sorollismo in Valencia, so-calledafter the painter Joaquín Sorolla.
 
In the early stages of his career Lahuerta moved towards Expressionism, although he also admired the Italian Quattrocento. In the 1950s he was drawn to the of Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), as can be seen in the heightened colouring of his painting, with an intense palette that nonetheless never renounced his compositional simplicity.
 
Together with Francisco Lozano (1912-2000), Lahuerta was the most influential exponent of Valencia’s post-war landscape painting, reaching his creative peak in this subject matter in the 1960s. With a modulated brushstroke, not as explosive as Lozano’s, Lahuerta succeeds in capturing the simplicity of his surrounding environs with great sensuousness, based on a wise use of colour and a masterly treatment of light to convey a higher lyrical expressiveness.
 
The sea was a recurrent subject matter in Lahuerta’s oeuvre, and this watercolour is similar to others made around 1935 in San Sebastian, many of which he showed at the exhibition he had in Paris in that same year. Made with a dynamic technique and an expedient brushstroke, this sketch made en plein air transmits a delicate austerity which lends the main role to the two boats moored in the centre of the port. The bare mooring bollard conveys a nostalgic feeling, intensified by the prevailing range of cold colours.