This is one of the artist’s works which best expresses the language of his mature practice: a more simplified and magical painting dominated especially by colour and by his personal and unmistakable palette of greens.

Art historians often divide Sunyer’s work into two clearly differentiated periods. The first would correspond to his time in Paris, when he succeeded in making a name for himself as a modern artist in the Europe of his time, doing so on his own merits alongside major names like André Derain (1880-1954), Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), James Ensor (1860-1949), Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Paul Signac (1863-1935) or Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). The second period, which coincided with his return to Sitges, culminated the career he had begun in Paris and marked his artistic maturity. It was defined by a highly personal sensibility for colour and light, and by a prevailing Mediterranean overtone and the presence of ideals.

The painting in hand was created following the artist’s return to Spain from his exile in France during the Spanish Civil War, a rather troublesome period if we consider that the artist had to confront Franco’s courts. It represents a bucolic, genre scene in which the figures blend in perfectly with nature. The oxen open up the composition, walking towards the woman sitting on the right as she stares into the distance. The placid, peaceful posture of this energetic young woman wearing a blouse, skirt and apron seems to suggest a rest after a hard day’s work in the fields. She would appear to be a prototype of an ordinary working woman. At her feet, in the foreground, are her personal belongings, making a picturesque still-life with a kerchief bedecked with flowers, a botijo and a leather pouch. In the background, superimposed and resolved in strata of different colours, there is a meadow, a wheat field and, in the distance, hiding the horizon, a majestic wood of trees whose simple lines suggest a child’s drawing.

As is customary with this artist, drawing once again plays a key role, with the figures and trees well outlined while the rest of nature, rendered in a warm palette, seems to merge in quick, loose brushstrokes.