Princess Metternich (Pauline, Countess Sándor; 1836–1921), the wife of the Austrian ambassador to the court of Napoléon III, called herself the "best-dressed monkey in Paris." Here, Boudin takes her at her word, devoting a scrap of board to capturing the effect of her voluminous skirts billowing in the gusts of the Norman shore.

Boudin achieved success with his scenes of fashionably dressed families taking the air at Trouville and other beach resorts, and apart from Empress Eugénie, no woman would have aroused more interest on the beach than Princess Metternich. A close friend of the empress, she became the face of fashion in Second Empire Paris. According to the acid-tongued Goncourt brothers, she was ubiquitous: "Her, always her! In the street, at the Casino, at Trouville, at Deauville, on foot, in a carriage, on the beach, at children's parties, at balls for important people, always and everywhere, this monster . . . who has only the elegance that she can buy from the dressmaker for one hundred thousand francs a year."