Although today Bomberg is seen as an important figure in post-war British art, throughout his lifetime he failed to gain much recognition. In 1954, hopeful of a new start, he returned to Spain with the dream of establishing a school of art. This work is one of a final series of figure paintings he completed whilst there. The simplified and fragmented hooded figure represented is not recognisable as the old Spanish gypsy woman Bomberg used as a model. It can be seen as an introspective depiction of the depression that repeatedly shrouded the artist. Painted in the last years of his life, it is perhaps an acknowledgement of his own mortality - showing a weakening figure with bowed head, bathed in a bright, almost religious, light.