Catalan school, ca. 1900. Colla del Safrà. "The washhouse". Oil on canvas. Signed and dated in the lower margin. Measurements: 97 x 96 cm. A woman wrapped in mantila, seated on the stone steps, chooses the clothes that she prepares to wash. A second washerwoman turns her back to us while she soaks the clothes in a large fountain basin. This one has a large laundry room, which occupies the center of a square with fruit trees and jasmine. At the top, behind a baluster, whitewashed houses in different colors are lined up. The whole is impregnated with the warm lights of the sunset. This painting belongs to the Catalan school of the Colla del Safrà. This was the name given to a group of Barcelona artists made up of Isidre Nonell, Joaquín Mir, Ricard Canals, Ramón Pichot, Juli Vallmitjana and Adrià Gual. It was founded in 1893 by Nonell and continued until 1896. The name of the group would be translated as the Saffron group or gang in reference to the yellowish color -azafranado- of many of his paintings. The group did not have a defined artistic program nor a rigid structure. It was rather a group of young people with some shared ideas, such as a certain anarchic attitude and -in the field of art- an interest in pleinair painting (painting in the open air), a subject matter that often revolved around marginalized people and a social conscience that brought them closer to the generation of '98.