Isidre Nonell belonged to the second generation of Catalan Modernism, also known as Postmodernism, a group of artists born during the 1870s. Seeking to move away from the Naturalism imported from Paris, he developed a highly personal artistic language that reached its fullest expression in his unconventional depictions of Romani women.

Dating from as early as 1901, this painting ranks among the first portraits of Romani people produced by Nonell, a subject matter that would soon become the most distinctive aspect of his work. His paintings offered a poignant vision of the Romani community while endowing the sitters with dignity and beauty. Bust of a Gypsy was exhibited in the artist’s first solo exhibition at Sala Parés in Barcelona in 1902. A review of the exhibition, entitled La gitanada de can Parés and published in the satirical magazine La perdiu ab salsa, highlighted this painting as “the least brilliant in colour, yet the most deeply moving in gesture; it is the young man in the smock, the one with his head bowed (…). Were it not for its touches of Goya and its Rubens-like brushwork, we would consider it the finest of them all.”