Henry La Thangue was a founder member of the New English Art Club and like many of his fellow artists spent time painting in mainland Europe. He is most associated with Provence and the Liguria coast of Italy. He also sailed down the coast of Spain as far as Andalusia and the Balearic Islands.
He worked almost exclusively on the spot, and it is likely that he sketched the present composition by the roadside in the Mallorcan hills, close to the village of Buger. The fast-flowing Torrent de Buger irrigated the cereal crops produced in the area, giving rise to the construction of windmills hundreds of years earlier. At least one other work, the smaller Moonrise in Spain (Christie’s, 16 December 2009), is known to have been completed at this location. The figure with the heavily laden donkey is a miller setting off for the coast or the local bake-house. Even into the 1920s, when the islands were colonised by artists such as Robert Graves, the native Spanish population continued to depend on the corn production of the small island.
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