He spent the winter in Étretat with his girlfriend Camille Doncieux and their newborn son.

These are the only two interior night paintings in Monet's entire work and may have served as a study for The Luncheon (1868).

Camille Doncieux has been positively identified in the gray gown, appearing a year before she and Monet were to be married.

The man standing near the fireplace mantle could be Monet's friend Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870).

[1] Art historian Hollis Clayson writes that the painting is "an exemplary naturalist nighttime interior in its quiet assessment of the subtleties of diffuse lamplight (from a ceiling oil lamp) plus firelight in the context of a quiet social gathering.