Hoping to recapture the success of Madame Charpentier and Her Children (acc. no. 07.122) at the Salon of 1879, Renoir asked his friend Mendès for permission to paint his three daughters. Mendès was a well-known writer and publisher of Symbolist poetry; his companion, Augusta Holmès, a virtuoso pianist and composer, was the mother of these girls. "I beg you to tell me immediately if you want portraits done of your beautiful children. I shall exhibit them [at the Impressionist exhibition] in May, so you can see why I am in a hurry. The eldest girl, seated at the piano, turns to give the note to her sister, who finds it on her violin. The youngest, leaning against the piano, listens as one must do at that tender age. I shall do the drawings at your house, and the portrait at mine." Renoir proposed a nominal fee of five hundred francs.

The 1888 exhibition was a critical and financial disaster, and the painting was ignored again at the 1890 Salon. It has since emerged, however, as one of Renoir's most impressive works, realized in his new, aggressive coloristic style, an homage to Fragonard and other eighteenth-century genre painters in the fluidity of the brushwork and in the treatment of theme.