John Singer Sargent, an Italian-born American who is serious and reserved at eighteen, has a talent for drawing, and has come to Paris to study painting with Carolus-Duran, a fashionable society portraitist.

During this time he also begins to experiment with the techniques of the Impressionists.

L. Birge Harrison had exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1881, and in 1882 his Salon entry, Novembre, becomes one of the first paintings by an American artist to be purchased by the French government.

The paintings of this period include peasant subjects that show the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage.

The limited palette and wistful mood of the early works will continue to be distinguishing features of Harrison's later landscape paintings.

Born in Philadelphia, Birge Harrison is the brother of artist T. Alexander Harrison.

He had studied first at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1874, and will later credit Thomas Eakins as a positive influence on his own teaching style.

He has come to Paris on the advice of John Singer Sargent to study with Carolus-Duran and at the École des Beaux-Arts under Alexandre Cabanel.