Claude Monet was the founder of the French Impressionist movement which sought to express one's perception of nature through essence and the effect of light on forms. He often painted the same scene multiple times as it endured the effects of light differing over the course of a day. In this painting, he captured three figures lounging under a canopy of large lilac bushes. As their forms recess into the shadows cast beneath the bushes, their flowers project into a dense cloud of foliage across the painting. The idiosyncrasies of Monet's perception of light reveal themselves in the reflection of light on a woman's dress amongst the shadows. The viewer can deduce the light to have been trickling through the canopy of lilacs and imagine the fleeting moments Monet captured.