The present work is a rare and highly accomplished watercolour that belongs to le Brocquy's Tinker Series which, in 1946 at twenty-nine years old, announced le Brocquy's arrival on the contemporary art scene, receiving critical acclaim. Le Brocquy first encountered the Tinkers in 1945 whilst working near Tullamore, County Offaly. This travelling community peculiar to Ireland, trading traditionally as tinsmiths, claim descent from those displaced by the persecution and famine in Ireland’s history. Living outside of accepted society with their own language and rituals, their intractability and independence resonated with le Brocquy: 'Most of all I was impressed by their insistence on freedom - freedom from every external regulation - observing only their own tribal rules, their tradition. Not, perhaps, altogether unlike the independence of the artist within society’ (Louis le Brocquy, The Inner Human Reality, film documentary, RTE 1, 21 February 2006). This interest with 'outsiders' and displaced people formed part of a wider European concern that found expression through artists wrestling with the direction of humanity in the wake of World War II.

Le Brocquy was the leading avant-garde painter of his generation in Ireland, challenging the status quo and consciously adopting a modern visual language. In 1946 he moved to London and formed friendships with many of the city's leading painters, including Keith Vaughan, John Minton, William Scott, McBride and Colquhoun, Francis Bacon and the Polish painter Jankel Adler who, as a friend of Picasso and the European avant-garde, represented a direct link to European artistic developments. Just the year before, le Brocquy had seen Picasso's work at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and his knowledge of Cubism is evident in the fractured, multi-dimensional composition of the present watercolour. The triangular faces also connect with artists looking to 'primitive' cultures, perhaps most famously in the work of Picasso, challenging the West's presumptions of society. Their shape also takes inspiration from the archaic forms in the figures on the Celtic high cross at Moone in Co. Kildare that le Brocquy encountered, and references to which connect the Travelling community with their ancient origins.
As the Tinkers enter the city, they form a lively procession - observers and observed; shop-keepers, vendors and a bicycle hint at the urban environment.

Le Brocquy developed these watercolours into a major series of celebrated oil paintings which he completed after his move to London (and his own entry to the city); it includes works such as Tinkers Resting, which was bought by the Tate, via the Leicester Galleries, in 1956, and Travelling Woman with Newspaper (sold Sotheby's, London, 18 May 2000, lot 158).