In 1817, Corot's father bought a country house in Ville-d'Avray, on the outskirts of Paris, where the painting was made.

The painting depicts the calm surface of a lake and buildings on the far shore, the figures of peasants, merged with the landscape and engaged in their usual familiar and ordinary activities.

Gentle pastel tones create a strange drowsy atmosphere of early morning in this landscape.

The depicted objects are quite prosaic, but Corot makes the landscape evoke in the viewer a feeling of peace and tranquility, while the fullness of light and air originates a sense of graceful dissolution in nature.

The painting was donated in 1955 to the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., by Count Cecil Pecci-Blunt.