As a youth Dali frequently did portraits. This one shows his maternal grandmother, Mariana Ferrer Sadurni, sewing in front of the window in Cadaqués. In commenting on this picture, Dali remarked: "Shortly after my departure for Madrid she had become almost blind and only partially conscious, not even recognizing the people who came to say hello to her. She would say, 'Is it Mathilda? Is it my father?' At this time I was at the School of Fine Arts and she did not see me any more. However, before dying and in front of all those assembled around her, she said, 'I have a cousin, in fact ... I don't know what my relationship is with him, but he is studying in Madrid and he is going to become the most famous of all Catalonian painters.' And shortly thereafter she died! This painting is prophetic, because when I did it my grandmother's sight was already very poor and she was wearing glasses, and I myself, whose eyesight is of the keenest, later for fear of self-punishment often pictured blind people in my paintings." Examples are Sentimental Colloquy, Resurrection of the Flesh, and The Apotheosis of Homer. Dali also has talked a lot about the blind, and even wrote an article entitled "Was Rembrandt Blind?" "It is for this same reason," he added, "that I concern myself with visual problems today by means of stereoscopy or the most recent scientific discovery: holography."
    This portrait was done c. 1921, at the same time that he was working on a self-portrait, a period when he styled himself as "the Mediterranean Carriére." He had come to share his father's admiration for this artist because of his Maternity, which was hanging on a wall in the family dining room. Dali's portrait of his grandmother is dominated by his quest for depicting the atmosphere. All brushstrokes have been eliminated in order to give preference to color and light. This canvas was painted during the summer: we can feel the heat penetrating the room, and the chiaroscuro is completely southern. To be logical the wall whose window opens on the wide bay should have been treated in a more somber tone. But when one knows the place and the intensity of the light from the sky reflected in the sea, it is easy to understand the perpetual state of dazzlement in which the painter was working, going from the landscape seen through the window to the grandmother seated in the semi-darkness blinded, he overexposed the zones of shadow.

    Here we see Dalí at the age of about seventeen at the top of the road that dominates all Cadaqués and leads to the cove of Seboya. The village appears in the background, sparkling in the morning sunshine. Behind Dalí we see what is nearly an island, Sortell, the estate of the Pichots. Dalí often went to this spot to paint the landscape in different lights. Speaking of this canvas, which is small in size, he relates: "At that time they called me Senor Patinas because I wore sideburns; it was in the middle of my student days at the Academy of Fine Arts, in 1921, when these sideburns were the longest. At the time of this painting, my hair was starting to grow but not as much. It was painted by the light of the setting sun. Sometimes I got up at dawn and I worked on four or five pictures at the same time. My canvases were brought to me, but I myself was wearing an outfit with all the brushes attached to it by strings, which made me into a sort of hippie! It allowed me immediately to grab the brush I needed. Later I wore a mechanic's suit which was so smeared with glue as to become a veritable suit of armor." All Dalí's interest is turned to the atmosphere of the picture; for the sake of accuracy, he had to return to the scene every day at the exact hour when the sun hit the village, leaving the cliff in the foreground in the shadow, where he placed himself. Then he worked on the likeness of himself in front of a mirror in his studio during the hot hours of the day.