Trellises covered with blooming purple Wisteria blossoms offer shade along with sun parasols on the balcony veranda where three ladies have gathered for an early summer's tea and company. Colorful splendor emerges in their fashions, and the setting has the perfect placement that such informal moments still requested in polite society, with the tea table set just so. Guillonnet's wife Emile was a passionate gardener, and many works are set in their private residences as the season's changed the colors. We firmly believe this is the family's residence in Carros, and his wife and friends are his models, a common practice of the Guillonnets.
This work comes from the opulence of the first decades of the 20th Century, and many of Guillennet's works include social outings and beach scenes. He purposed sought refinement and beauty, as life was unable "to provide perfect realization of our dreams of happiness." His art would be his direct consideration of his answer that philosophical need.
Carros, in the Alps-Maritime within the French Riviera near Nice, has been a location that has drawn humans to its beauty since prehistoric times. From this lower elevation, the water of the Var River leading to Nice and the Mediterranean in the soft blue distance.
