Charles Lamb was the eldest son of a Northern Ireland painter and decorator. He studied life-drawing in Belfast before winning a scholarship to the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin in 1917. Like so many painters and writers, Lamb focused on the people and places of the West of Ireland as the last vestige of what they saw as a true Irish culture. Unlike their Celtic Revival predecessors, it was contemporary rural Ireland that this generation aggrandised, celebrating its rugged heroism. In 1935, after a long relationship with the West, Lamb settled and worked in Carraroe, an Irish-speaking part of Connemara, but showed his work around Ireland, England and the United States of America.

In his portrait of a man and woman from the Aran Islands, off the Galway coast, the physical interdependence of the couple, as a result of a hard life, is implied in the way they sit, resolutely side by side, while the islanders dependence on the sea is emphasised by the low horizon.

The picturesque, earthy tones and soft lines of the couples beautiful home-spun and locally produced clothes would clearly have attracted Lamb in their marked contrast to the dark colours, sharp lines and hard fabrics of contemporary urban dress. The séailín (small shawl) seen here was worn by women of all ages to protect the head and shoulders, while a séalta mór (big shawl) was a prestigious garment bought or inherited by a woman at the time of her marriage. This best outdoor wear would conceal both pregnancies and a good figure, while immediately distinguishing a married or elderly woman from a young available girl. In recording this couple as heroic peasants, Lamb sets out to mark the difference between rural and urban, between then and now, and between an Irish culture and one with English, European and even American influences.