Ronald Alley in the 1982 Tate Gallery exhibition catalogue writes of this work 'In 1963 Sutherland made a number of sketches of the village fountain at Castellar, in the hills around his house at Menton, developing these into a series of paintings with the central theme of water running over stonework. Between 1963 and 1966 he made altogether about twelve oil paintings of fountains or cisterns, some based on formal fountains such as the one at Castellar and some on small waterfalls in the hills or water gushing out of a stone wall into a water tank, and sometimes with erotic and anatomical overtones.
In this particularly fine and resplendent example, the composition is more or less symmetrical and the forms, partly in shadow, partly in light, are offset by the golden glow of light which diffuses from behind through the patterned background of leaves.'