In 1915 Metzinger held his first exhibition at Galerie de l'Effort Moderne and began a close association with Juan Gris. He was greatly encouraged to paint cubist landscapes during a visit to Gris' home in Beaulieu-près-Loches in 1918. There followed a series of fine landscapes executed between 1919 and 1921 of which the current painting is an example. Discussing this series, David Robbins writes: "Characterized by simplified, highly stylized, quasi-geometric forms, these landscapes focus on the exterior walls and roofs of buildings, trees, brick walls, and sometimes a port or harbor with boats. The landscapes of 1919-20 reveal a greater emphasis on the prominent patterning of brushwork, while the scenes from 1921 are somewhat more curvilinear in form and composition.

"Metzinger's work from 1918-21 can be described as "classical Cubism", a term that characterizes most of the work by artists in the Léonce Rosenberg circle after 1916. This style has been described as "an alliance between Cubist pictorial method and classical aesthetics". His work represents a dialogue between abstraction and representation expressed through an emphasis on clarity, purity and structure in a synthetic Cubist idiom." (Exhibition catalogue, Jean Metzinger in Retrospect, Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, 1985, p. 46)