Claude Monet and his family lived at Argenteuil, outside Paris, from 1871 to 1878. Here he depicted his five- or six-year-old son, Jean, playing with a hoop and his wife, Camille, standing in the doorway of their vine-covered house. The pleasant weather and neatly kept garden, a forerunner of the artist's celebrated garden at Giverny, give a sense of tranquility and well-being to this painting. This was a period of financial security for Monet thanks to recent sales of his work to the Paris art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.