A musician, traditionally identified with a shepherd by his clothing, leans back onto a hillock in the landscape and plays his dulzaina, a traditional Spanish double-reed instrument.

Like its companion, Hunter by a Spring (2896), this is a cartoon for a tapestry in the Prince's dining room at the El Pardo Palace. Both were designed to hang above windows, flanking the tapestry representing Spring (P793).

The forced, low and upward-looking perspective was supposed to give the impression that the young man was playing his dulzaina for the viewers in a sort of trompe l'oeil much favored by eighteenth-century Venetian and Bolognese artists well known to Goya since his trip to Italy.