After returning to Sweden in the late 1920s, following almost ten years in Paris, Sigrid Hjertén suffered a severe mental breakdown. She was admitted to Beckomberga psychiatric hospital, where she remained in an almost catatonic state for an extended period and was no longer able to paint. Her husband, Isaac Grünewald, tried to help her find her way back to art by bringing canvases and paints to the hospital. Gradually, her health improved, and she was eventually able to paint again. In the early 1930s, the couple regularly spent their summers on the French Riviera, where they painted together.

In Hjertén’s paintings from the following years, colour became increasingly central. It took precedence over the subjects and landscapes, and her art was characterised by powerful expressiveness and intensity. Colour became an independent means of expression, almost seeming to take over the entire composition.

During a period of temporary improvement in her health, Hjertén was able to travel to Palermo, Sicily, in 1934, where she immersed herself completely in her painting for several months.

In his Memoirs, her son Iván describes his mother’s distinctive brushwork as something that, in her almost visionary works, becomes a kind of signature tune. He compares its effect to a shower of light and colour emanating from a rainbow-hued palette. Her diagonal brushstrokes create a vibrant surface in which the colours seem to shimmer and move. During the 1930s, Hjertén developed a bold and innovative colour language that distinguished her from many of her contemporaries. Time and again, she demonstrated a willingness to experiment and push the boundaries of art: first as an avant-garde Expressionist in the 1910s, and later, in the 1930s, through her intense and vividly coloured depictions of her surroundings.

The present subject, depicting a Sicilian water carrier, can thus be seen as an emotional farewell to a world of colours and moods in which Hjertén seems increasingly to have immersed herself. The forms dissolve into an almost ecstatic visual language, in which colour and emotion take centre stage.