Discart captures a basket weaver, engaged in the intricacies of his trade, in this contemplative scene. His decision to depict his subject in a moment of rapt concentration, conveyed by his furrowed brow and steadied hand, signals the man's earnest devotion to his craft, perhaps not unlike Discart's own. Like his fellow Vienna Academicians Ludwig Deutsch and Rudolf Ernst, Discart’s works are characterized by a high degree of detail. The man is wearing a djellaba, with his babouche slippers on the ground in front of him. The weaves of the baskets are visible in front of the weaver, as he stitches each thread one by one. There are other items characteristic of Discart, such as the copper pot and the wooden door in the background, all of which would have been present in Morocco during the artist's travels. Discart focused on the truthful and detailed representation of everyday life as he saw it.

Discart was born in Modena in 1855 and in 1873, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in a history painting course at the Vienna Art Academy taught by the German classical painter Anselm Feuerbach. After Feuerbach retired from the Academy, Discart and his fellow students Ludwig Deutsch and Carl de Méerode applied to study under Leopold Carl Müller, who was made professor of the Academy following Feuerbach. They were refused admittance into Müller's class, which prompted Discart and Deutsch to travel to Paris (though Discart was admitted to Müller's class the next year). Discart's career is an interesting combination of these two influences: his classical training in Vienna under such revered master-painters, and his experiences with his contemporaries in the cosmopolitan Paris art world. He first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1884 and painted Orientalist subjects until the early 1920s.