Gonzalo Bilbao’s practice is defined by his ability to balance the classic painterly principles of the with the aesthetic shifts taking place during his time.

After an early realistic period, influenced by his master José Villegas Cordero (1844-1921) and by other Neo-Romantic artists-including the Catalan painter Mariano Fortuny (1838-1874), who was in Seville in the early 1870s- Bilbao made incursions into Neo-Impressionism and a Mediterranean-based luminist style very much in tune with Sorolla’s language, although also influenced by the tradition of Seville. His wide long brushstroke is laden with high colouring, transferring to the canvas the natural light of his hometown and the effects of chromatic reverberation.

Largely a painter of genre scenes, Bilbao was adept at capturing the everyday and the beauty of little details, giving great import in his works to the female figure, though he also produced landscapes and portraits with excellent results.

In this work the artist represents three children, probably siblings, in the garden of their family home, under a large tree with loosely sketched foliage. The setting is a warm summer’s day. The eldest girl at the centre of the composition is wearing a straw hat and has a basket of freshly cut flowers over her right wrist, while holding her younger brother’s hand in her left. The boy is carrying a hoop in his other hand. Meanwhile, the middle sister is posed sideways, turning her head towards the beholder as she holds her hat in her foreshortened right arm, a posture Bilbao would repeat in other portraits throughout his career and that reminds us of the self-portrait attributed to Velázquez (1599-1660) at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The dominance of white and pastel tones in the composition reinforces the innocence, naiveté and sensibility normally associated with children. Everywhere except the faces, the artist has used a free-flowing brushstroke nuanced by glazes.