After a few years of studies in his hometown of Triest, which was a part of Austria-Hungary before the First World War, Marussig took a series of journeys to European cities. He first went to Vienna and later moved to Munich, where he met Fritz von Uhde, one of the founders of the Secession. In 1903, the artist went to Rome, and in 1905, he moved to Paris, where the fauvist movement was starting. Marussig first exhibited his works in 1906, and his first solo exhibition took place in 1914 in Cassirer’s gallery in Berlin. In 1920, the artist moved to Milan, where in two years he became one of the founders of the Sette dei Novecento group.

The work from the Museum collection, painted in 1926, is typical of the artist during this period, when Marussig gave up the decorative modern style and turned to small paintings in a reserved color scheme – still lifes and figures in interiors of alla vita borghese.

Such artworks reflected a trend towards the Renaissance traditions. This was quite typical for the Novecento group.