In the 1890s, Renoir had developed a very intimate style of portraiture that was well suited to portraying the family members, friends, and neighbours that he asked to pose for him. As Barbara E. White has observed, these works are 'intimate studies in which the visible strokes create a lively snapshot effect. Renoir treated his figures as models in active scenes; these are not meant to be revealing character studies. Consequently, he blurred the distinction between making a portrait of someone and using that person as a model' (Barbara E. White, Impressionists Side by Side, New York, 1966, p. 91).

The present work belonged at one time to Ambroise Vollard – widely regarded as one of the most important dealers in French contemporary art at the beginning of the twentieth century. Vollard bought hundreds of paintings by Renoir, who was to become one of his favourite artists, and even encouraged him to practise sculpture. Renoir later confessed that “if I have tried my hand at sculpture, it was not with the aim of annoying Michelangelo, nor was it because painting was no longer enough for me, but because Mr. Vollard very gently forced me into it.”