This scene—painted in the year when the artist’s first wife, Carlota Aguiló, died—shows the group of gipsies on the move. The characters are arranged around an attractive young gipsy man who seems to be leading the group, the same man who is at the centre of the painting that forms a pair with this one. The palette is rich in colours and the prevailing whites provide light contrasts.

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.