Born and trained in London but active in New York, Seymour Joseph Guy was well regarded for his quaint genre paintings and sympathetic images of children, working in a similar mode as his friend and fellow Brit John George Brown. Unlike his usual scenes of benign juvenile mischief, this work features a homemaker blowing a horn to summon her family for dinner, her children presumably playing beyond the frame. The subject and composition recall the series of celebrated prints and paintings produced in the 1870s by artist Winslow Homer, who shared a studio address with Guy during the period.