The American collector and artist Walter Gay moved to Paris in 1876 and from the last years of the nineteenth century made a name for himself with paintings and watercolors of stylish interiors, only inhabited by works of art, carefully selected and placed props, and light. The room in the present drawing is situated in what was known as the Villa Sylvia in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, near Nice (see ‘The villa Sylvia, Alpes Maritimes. The property of Mr. Ralph Curtis’, Country Life, XXVIII, 16 July 1910, pp. 90-97). The villa was one of the properties owned by a friend of Gay (and more famously of John Singer Sargent), the collector Ralph Curtis, and named after his daughter. The same fireplace and tall candlesticks appear in a painting by Gay, sold at Christie’s, New York, 22 May 2014, lot 41; and in a watercolor, formerly owned by Sophie Gay Griscom (G.A. Reynolds, Walter Gay. A Retrospective, exhib. cat., New York University, Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, 1980, no. 44, ill.). Sophie Griscom was a niece of the artist and an aunt of Nina Griscom by her marriage to Lloyd P. Griscom, Jr.