The painting was held by Episcopal Church of the Ascension in New York for many years, until it was bought in 1981 by the Savings Bank of Valencia (now part of Bankia).

It depicts a crowd of sick and disabled naked children, including some using crutches due to polio, on the Malvarrosa beach [es] in Valencia.

They have been brought to the beach by a black-clothed monk from the Valencian asylum hospital of San Juan de Dios [es], to bathe in the seawater as a therapeutic measure.

They were children from the Hospital of San Juan de Dios, the detritus of society, blind, mad, disabled or leprous.

Sorolla gave a different sketch to John Singer Sargent in 1903 (now in the Masaveu Collection in Madrid), and a third study was given to William Merritt Chase also in 1906.