The setting for Hugo Birger’s motif is the garden behind his studio in Montmartre in Paris. In his desperate struggle to make his breakthrough, Birger appears to have experimented with a fashionable genre, in the style of Tissot’s similar motifs. The fact that Birger depended on other artists’ work as models is believed to be why his figures are often perceived as rigid – perhaps as he was not confident of his own talent.