Apart from his signature landscapes and seascapes, Martí i Alsina also created urban scenes, portraits, figures and nudes as well as history, biblical and genre paintings. That is the case of this small work, which forms a pair with another painting with a similar subject matter and measurements, conceived to show the exoticism of scenes featuring a group of gipsies.

Martí i Alsina was regarded as an innovative artist, ahead of his time, who always displayed an eagerness for modernism and for the new, in opposition to the obsolete official painting at the time prevailing in Catalonia. Drawing from the principles underlying the work of Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), his painting defended the depiction of his surrounding social reality, with subject matters that, up until then, had not been customary in the Spanish tradition. His practice was built around his agile, powerful and energetic brushwork, in turn directly rooted in his passionate nature.

In this scene—painted in the year when the artist’s first wife, Carlota Aguiló, died—a group of gipsies have stopped along the road to take a rest. The characters are arranged around a young gipsy man in a striking pose who is standing in the middle of the composition, similarly to the other painting with which it forms a pair. The palette is rich in colour and the prevailing whites provide contrasts of light.