Widely recognised as one of the major exponents of Realism in Spain, Martí i Alsina played a key role in the renewal of Catalan painting during the second half of the nineteenth century. In his day he was a pioneer of the direct study of nature, discarding academic methods in order to embark on a new concept of painting that would lay the foundations for the future of Catalan landscape painting.

His contact with the art scene in France, and particularly with the landscape painters of the and the work of Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), encouraged him to continue along a path he had already taken intuitively. Influenced by Positivism, the artist cultivated a type of painting which aspired to evoke the truth of emotions through direct contact with nature and the study of the atmosphere in all its changing phases.

Painted in the early 1860s, in what is often considered to be his breakthrough period as an artist, this work demonstrates Martí i Alsina’s ability to recreate effects that imbue the painting with greater materiality, achieved thanks to technical dexterity that sometimes involves the use of the palette knife, at the time a very modern recourse that enabled him to obtain the tones he was after. His combination of colours and his research into light—key elements in shaping his landscapes—allowed the artist to capture the fleetingness of the moment, without ever losing a sense of harmony.

Worth underscoring is the fact that Martí i Alsina was keen on sketching au naturel, a noteworthy advance in the Catalan art scene of his time. Although he did not paint the final works directly au plein air, he made sketches from which he then executed his paintings in the studio. In them he specified the date, time and place, as well as the range of colours and the weather conditions at the time of making them.

This painting depicts a landscape in Riera de Argentona, an area Martí i Alsina frequented regularly throughout his life. From his earlier steps as a painter to the final days of his life, Martí i Alsina made countless sketches of the landscape surrounding the town of Argentona. Removed from the big city, there he found a paradise which would become the main focus of many of his most significant works.