Gustave Caillebotte was a pivotal figure to the Impressionist movement, revered as a patron and benefactor to the group while being an active painter himself. Wealthy and well connected, Caillebotte played a crucial role in organizing and financing the eight Impressionist exhibitions, showing his own works five times in 1876, 1877, 1879, 1880 and 1882. French Impressionism was a movement that signaled a new kind of realism. By shifting the focus of paintings from “fetes galantes,” or mythological figures, to middle-class citizens enjoying the Seine or the coast, painters such as Renoir, Degas and Caillebotte captured the rise of a new recreational culture in 19th-century France. These scenes were essential to the Impressionist mission because they allowed artists to experiment with the effect of light on moving water and the naturalistic effects of sunlight on skin. Ultimately, these "leisure landscapes" served as a vibrant record of a society transitioning into the modern age, where the fleeting joy of a weekend outing became a subject worthy of high art.

Caillebotte’s works, and especially his drawings, are extremely rare on the market as he had no need to sell his work during his lifetime. Most of his collection remained in his family. From the mid-1870s on, Caillebotte also collected paintings by his fellow Impressionists, both for their quality and to be supportive of his friends. At his untimely death in 1894, his will bequeathed his collection of nearly sixty works to the French State, thus forming the heart of the Impressionist collection of the Musée d’Orsay today.