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The present work exemplifies Duncan Grant’s career-long assimilation of twentieth-century European innovations in art. Particularly loyal to the post-impressionist style which inspired him during his youth, the figures in the present work are instinctively built from blasts of quick yet thoughtfully placed brushstrokes.

An impression of transient movement permeates the landscape; the sun passes over the composition evidenced by the suggestion of shadows following the bustling figures. Whilst perspective is suggested through the receding crowd of busy market attendees, Grant’s undoubted preoccupation with colour and unity of design is palpable. Such devotion to this artistic mindset was almost certainly engendered, as is the case with many of the Bloomsbury Group artists, during his early career and connection with the Omega Workshops. The Omega Workshops were an experimental design collective, established by Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Grant in 1913. They aimed to dissolve the barrier between the fine and decorative arts, bringing them together through boldly patterned rugs, linen, furniture, and ceramics.

Although Grant would continually return to interior, domestic spaces as an important subject matter, his appetite for travel developed; evidenced in the present painting of Jemaa el-Fnaa Square, a significant cultural symbol, space, and bustling marketplace in the heart of Marrakesh, Morocco. Grant visited Morocco several times and the landscape clearly made an impression on him; as he took a studio in Fez for two months in 1968, three years after the present painting was completed.