João Maria de Jesus de Melo Falcão Trigoso was born in 1879 in Lisbon into a wealthy family with eight siblings. He graduated in painting from the Lisbon School of Fine Arts, followed the master Silva Porto and was a member of various outdoor painting groups founded by Carlos Reis. He remains faithful throughout his life to an artistic outdoors painting attitude, of a landscape register, which he considers ethically committed to the idea of developing the identity of a "national painting".

Complying with all the principles of naturalist - sur le motif
painting, Trigoso abandoned closed studio work and carried out his paintings directly on location, preferably during the summer, almost carrying out a landscape and ethnographic survey of the regions he visited. Preferring coastal areas and setting itself apart from his usual beaches, this painting shows the bank of a river where washerwomen do their laundry, next to a farmhouse, framed in the centre of the composition and surrounded by vegetation. The river occupies a strip at the lowest level of the composition and reflects the surrounding rural landscape, where sheep can be seen grazing.

Although it is an extemporaneous painting, reiterated in its naturalist affiliation to the 19th century, Falcão Trigoso's technical posture denounces, however, more up-to-date aspects, given the treatment of the elements portrayed, through the blurring and light punctuations, reducing the forms to small brushstrokes. With its youthful, luminous colours, this work responds perfectly to the late-naturalist market that still prevailed in Portugal during the first half of the 20th century, supported not only by private purchase, but also by the Estado Novo regime that regularly exhibited and rewarded these artists.