Though he painted historical scenes and studio portraits, Daniel Ridgway Knight is best known for his paintings of a dreamy, bucolic French countryside, bursting with flowers and populated with humble peasant women working (but never too hard) or at leisure. Upon his first trip to France in 1861, he formed influential friendships with Impressionists Alfred Sisley and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and by 1871 he had become an expatriate. Knight’s peaceful scenes of country life, painted in an amalgam of impressionistic and academic styles, were continually in demand.