Vayreda learnt from his master Ramon Martí i Alsina to depict open-air landscapes in a realistic setting. This painting is a pastoral scene featuring peasants and animals. It is a very representative work of the classical style in its years of pictorial plenitude (1877 to 1882). The painter composes in a general panorama to give value to the “overall impression”. All the artist’s usual resources appear: the water of a small pond reflecting the sky and the figures in the foreground, the trees, green and brown tones, cows grazing, well placed in the centre of the composition and accompanied by the blurred figures of the shepherdesses, all distributed in a theatrical manner and framed in a warm setting. Joaquim Vayreda, as in modern landscape painting, wants to escape from contrived scenes devoid of mythology through the study of nature and more emotive brushstrokes, leaving behind the more academic dogmas.

Year 1878

Oil on canvas

79x137 cm

Joaquim Vayreda, 1843 - 1894