The painting in this auction was painted during an important decade in Dick Beer's career. His paintings of the 1910s, when he was in Paris, were Impressionist in 1912-1913, after which they developed further.

The painting in the auction was painted in 1916, during Dick Beer's neo-impressionist period (1914-1917). The artist then moved on to expressionist painting with cubist tendencies.

Technically, and perhaps most beautifully, it is the aforementioned neo-impressionist period of 1914-1917 that is also the strongest in Dick Beer's oeuvre.

In the paintings of these years, light and impressionist brushstrokes are prominent. The painting in the auction is an excellent example of this. Like the early impressionists, Dick Beer used small, dense brushstrokes and few details; instead, the composition emerges from the play of light.

Dick Beer was born in London in 1893 but left his home town for Sweden in 1907. Even as a young man, Dick Beer knew that he wanted to devote himself to painting and studied first at the Althin School of Painting and then at the Royal College of Art in Stockholm under Gustaf Cederström.