After his trip to Italy in 1881, Renoir made changes to his painting style. Instead of painting en plein air, and with quick brush strokes, he began to carefully outline his figures, and to emphasize the contours and modeling of the scene. It has been referred to as Renoir’s “Ingres Period,” as he was highly influenced by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, the prominent neo-classical painter. The woman in the painting is Renoir’s girlfriend, Aline Charigot, who became his wife seven years after this painting was completed. It now resides, as it has since 1929, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City