In the great park in the heart of Paris a gentleman peers through his monocle at a stylish young woman, while a girl, perhaps her charge, digs in the pathway before Auguste-Nicolas Cain's huge bronze group Tiger and Crocodile (ca. 1874). Bickford's charming picture is a rare early example of an American artist's portrayal of a public park, an emblematic modern space and a subject identified with French Impressionism. John Singer Sargent had painted the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris in 1879, and William Merritt Chase would begin a series of Impressionist views of the new parks of New York in 1886. In the manner of contemporary French painters such as Jean Béraud, Bickford utilized deliberate composition, meticulous detail, and high finish, which reflected his studies in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts under Henri Lehmann and at the Académie Julian. In 1882 Bickford showed this painting at the National Academy of Design in New York, where he often exhibited. He worked from 1905 until 1931 as a sculpture attendant at the Metropolitan Museum, became interested in the medium, and specialized in animal sculpture in his later years.