Darío de Regoyos was instrumental in the development of late nineteenth-century Spanish art, being one of the key players in the evolution of modernity in Spain. His close relationship with important European artists such as Georges Seurat (1859-1891), Paul Signac (1863-1935) and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), and his involvement in major international exhibitions and salons of the period, led him to develop an innovative painting language, associated with Impressionism and removed from the conventions of the time.

He depicted the estuary of the river Nervión on several occasions. Here, he shows its mouth, with the breakwaters of Arriluce or of Algorta, which divides the composition in two halves. He avoids any possible staticism resulting from the arrangement in bands through the movement of the waves that peter out on the beach of Ereaga, and the advancing fog in the background. Accordingly, after starting with a traditional compositional structure, he the introduces a number of lines vanishing in the background, thus enhancing the perspective. He also alters the conventional representation by adopting a high viewpoint. The consequence is a more defined structure and the incorporation of a novel element, namely the presence of the observer, a signature trait which this painter used with great freedom.

This painting evinces the importance of the study of light, an ongoing concern in Regoyos’s practice, who was in fact one of the first late nineteenth-century Spanish artists to confront in earnest the effects of light in order to give it visual expression. Regoyos succeeds in rendering the harmonies of light in the atmosphere thanks to his personal use of colour and complementary tones to create contrasts. In fact, his interest in landscape was mostly as a vehicle for experimentation with colours used to achieve different atmospheric effects.

Another feature readily visible in this piece that advocates its proximity to impressionistic principles is its obsessive quest for the instant, to capture that first impression as we approach nature en plein air. To convey what he perceives as quick as possible, the artist uses a palette of light and nuanced hues and a very fast execution technique based on little touches of colour. One can also note how the brushstrokes are arranged in different directions, sometimes quite thickly, others in the thinnest of layers in order to sketch the elements of the composition as their distance from the spectator increases with a highly modern treatment of colour.