Melancholy, realised around 1905, is a painting that well summarises the essence of Josep María Tamburini. An eclectic and receptive artist, he absorbed and elaborated upon several formal aspects of the successful Catalan styles at the beginning of the twentieth century – Catalan academic and genre realism, French symbolism and English Pre-Raphaelitism. As a result, he produced paintings that focus on idealised female figures in a mysterious and nostalgic landscape. These were themes he shared with Joan Brull (1863-1912), Alexandre de Riquer (1856-1920) and Joan Llimona (1860-1926), artists who would form with him the ‘white wing’ of Modernism.