When Monet painted this picture of his elder son, Jean, in the summer of 1872, the artist and his family had recently returned to France from their self-imposed exile during the Franco-Prussian War. Through the efforts of the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, the artist's finances had begun to improve, enabling the once-impoverished Monets to rent a house in Argenteuil, an agreeable suburb northwest of Paris. For this portrait, Monet posed the five-year-old in the garden of their new home. Monet never exhibited the painting but kept it throughout his life.