J. Alden Weir followed his father, painter Robert W. Weir to the Holley boarding house in Greenwich in the late 1870s. The younger Weir and John H. Twachtman stayed there together in 1878 and 1879, becoming founding members of the Cos Cob artist colony. Weir purchased a property in Branchville, Connecticut located to the northeast of Greenwich in 1882.
The current watercolor and gouache on paper dates from the moment that Weir began visiting Cos Cob in the late 1870s and demonstrates Weir’s academic training at the National Academy of Design and his experiences abroad, studying at Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts.