Hermenegildo Anglada-Camarasa left his home region when he was 23 years old. He never lived there again, with the exception of the years between 1936 and 1939: an extraordinary period of his life. In 1936, at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Anglada-Camarasa was in Barcelona, and, due to his political commitment to the Republican side, could not return to Majorca, which had fallen to Francoist forces. Thanks to his contacts, in August 1937 he settled with his wife and young daughter in the monastery of Montserrat, which at that time did not have monks in residence. Instead, it was occupied by the Generalitat de Cataluña in order to preserve it from possible attacks. There, he interacted with many artists and politicians seeking refuge in the same conditions, or who paid visit to the monastery: the sculptor Josep Viladomat, the composer Robert Gerhard, and the president of the Generalitat de Cataluña: Lluís Companys. Anglada-Camarasa was evidently engaged with the cultural and political life of that time, and participated in it himself via his position as delegate of the commissariat of the Generalitat in Montserrat, for the preservation and conservation of the artistic patrimony of the monastery.

This brief period in Montserrat (1937-1938) was a time of great creativity for the painter, though this was little known by the public for many years. Immersed in the setting of the landscape, he dedicated himself almost exclusively to the representation of the mountain and its surroundings. His paintings were inspired by the view he had from his workshop, an office in the old monastery choir which dominated the Llobregat river valley, or his excursions in the region. Anglada-Camarasa was not a painter who worked sur le motif, in contrast with Joaquim Mir, but rather painted in his studio from notes, memories, sensations, and photographs. Some of his assembled photomontages are conserved, where he put together different cuttings of photographs to create his own compositions. An example is a group composed of three independent photographic fragments that he used when painting the present work, previously conserved in the collection of Antonio Beteré Cabeza.