During the mid- and late 1880s, Sargent's interest in Impressionism was nourished by his contact with Claude Monet, whom he visited several times at Giverny beginning in early summer 1885, and by the chance to work outdoors during the summers of 1885 and 1886 in the Cotswolds village of Broadway, Worcestershire. There, in an informal colony that included American painters Francis Davis Millet and Edwin Austin Abbey, Sargent created scenes such as this one, which captures with animated brushwork the rural activities and golden sunlight that attracted urbanites to the Cotswolds.

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