The landscape reflected in this picture is not a mere representation of animate nature, populated by living beings, but of nature itself endowed with a soul, in constant movement.

This painting is from a stage in the artist’s career in which he returned to figurative painting after a period devoted to a clearly abstract mode of expression. It depicts a landscape, but also an essentially Romantic scene. This was a new phase in which he reflected on the work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Symbolism and Oriental aesthetics.

Juan Carlos Savater’s Romantic landscapes are characterised by a marked sense of Symbolism, in which nature and figurative representation are presented in ethereal and profoundly spiritual settings, as in this picture.

In this symbolist composition the golden light evokes an imagined landscape, a different form of nature from that perceived by our senses. The trees are conventional rather than examples of real species, and the viewer’s attention is drawn to the two white tulips by their disproportionate size. The quest for the sublime and the metaphysical leads Savater to employ loose but careful brushstrokes, which emphasise the liveliness and spirituality of each of the elements he includes in the composition.