The Dalmatian Women gouache belongs to the series of costermongers with donkeys, which Mušič created in Dalmatia. It is one of the variations of his popular motif, painted in 1938, most probably on the island of Korčula.
The painter’s attention is caught by a group of women of Dalmatia with donkeys equipped with pack saddles. He paints them while the costermongers are resting or putting on the load intended for the town market. One of the women has a sunshade. They are placed before the stone fence made of the same kind of stones as can be seen in the barren karst landscape in the background.
Mušič began painting such scenes of Dalmatian daily life already in 1936 on Korčula. He usually depicted donkeys, milkwomen and costermongers lined in processions, equipped with sunshades and loads, travelling behind stone fences in bleak karst landscape. When the painter settled in Venice after WW2, the little donkeys turned into little horses and the costermongers into island women in the series which make him extra recognizable. When he himself renounced his youthful oeuvre, he nevertheless continued to show at his retrospective exhibitions his gouaches of costermongers with little donkeys created on Korčula in the second half of the 1930’s.