In 1946 Robert Colquhoun travelled to County Cork in Ireland with his long-term partner, Robert MacBryde. The pair spent several weeks staying with the painter Patrick Hennessy, whom they had first met on their post-diploma studies at Hospitalfield House, near Arbroath. Colquhoun was impressed by the working women he saw there and produced several paintings of ‘shawlies’ – the poor women who wore shawls over their heads. However, the two figures portrayed here bear a striking resemblance to Colquhoun and MacBryde. The Dubliners was included in Colquhoun’s solo show at the Lefevre Gallery in October 1947, priced at £70 – double the price charged for similarly-sized works just three years earlier, and an indication of his rising status in the art world.