The painting of gardens played a major role in the practice of this Catalan painter. He started painting them in 1895, when he visited Granada and was fascinated with the autumn in the city and the echo of the Alhambra gardens. This new direction in his work led him to travel throughout Spain, painting landscapes in Valencia, Mallorca, Castile and Gerona.

Rusiñol spent the last summers of his life in Arbúcies (Gerona) with his wife Lluïsa Denis. There he painted many works, including this view of the Badés Park, as one can ascertain in the label on the back of the canvas.

The work in hand frames an overgrown, neglected garden, the kind in which the artist found “the essence of an artwork”, in tune with the decadent spirit defining the end of the century.

The canvas is like a window opening onto a park in twilight. At some points a clear light filters through the oaks (roures in Catalan). The loose assertive brushstroke, indicative of an assured experienced artist, underlines the green of the vegetation. A path winds its way among the trees and the natural slant of the branches towards the left injects a sense of dynamism into the composition, guiding the beholder’s gaze towards the area where the light filters through the leaves. The work brings to mind the words that the poet Rubén Darío wrote about Casas in 1915: “trees like bouquets, like paintbrushes, like obelisks.”

This work was exhibited in 1931 at Sala Parés. That same year, Sitges paid the last tribute to the painter, commissioning a sculpture of him to the sculptor Joan Borrell i Nicolau (1888-1951).