This screen is a unique work within Frederic Marès' artistic output, although we lack extensive information on it. We do know that it was kept in the workshop at Marès house on Mallorca street until the 1940s, and despite the fact that we are unaware of the precise date when it was made, it is attributed to around 1934.

Marès presented an Altarpiece (wood and glass)in the decorative arts category of the National Fine Arts Exhibition in Madrid in the months of May and June 1934. Despite the unusual name, it most likely refers to this work.

The marine subject matter and the female figure either nude or dressed to bathe can be related to the production of other contemporary artists from the 1930s, including Josep Obiols, Francesc A. Galí, Manuel Humbert, Rafael Solanic and Santiago Marco. They all cultivated the same subject in a variety of artistic disciplines, even after the Civil War as well.

The formal and iconographic characteristics enable us to situate this piece within a twofold aesthetic and iconographic current: the most archetypical Mediterranean Noucentisme - from the agave and the boat - and the most international Art Deco, which is present in the very conception of the work and the choice of materials - lacquered wood and acid-etched glass - which yield strikingly contrasting colours: white in the midst of gleaming black.