An Italianate landscape with washerwomen, a child playing and a man fishing beyond; and An Italianate landscape with young women and a fisherman before a cascade

Francesco Zuccarelli was born in the Tuscan village of Pitigliano but trained in Florence, possibly under Paolo Anesi, before moving to Rome where he worked with Giovanni Maria Morandi, Pietro Nelli and perhaps Andrea Locatelli. There he encountered the works of Claude and absorbed the great tradition of European landscape painting before returning to Florence. By 1732 he had settled in Venice where he immediately established himself as a painter of pastoral landscapes, enjoying the patronage of the most illustrious collectors of the day, including Francesco Algarotti, Marshal Schulenburg and Joseph Smith. In 1752 Zuccarelli travelled to England where he found great fame and later became a founder member of the Royal Academy in 1768.

Zuccarelli frequently included gourds, or pumpkins, in his pictures, such as that used here as a hollowed-out container, tied around the fisherman’s waist. The presence of these gourds has been interpreted as a signatory device: Zuccarelli's name can be translated as 'little pumpkin', and the gourds in his pictures, therefore, can be seen to playfully transform his name, standing in as his signature.