The British-born artist John George Brown made his reputation with his sympathetic renderings of urban street children. He later turned to pastoral subjects such as this narrative scene of an elderly pair socializing in a rustic domestic setting. Brown’s realistic style and homespun subject matter spoke to a broad audience: “We have no more popular artist in America than Mr. J. G. Brown,” a critic declared in 1882, when this painting’s companion piece, The Neighbors (also in the High’s collection), was exhibited in New York to popular acclaim. “He is more certain of his audience, and more direct in his appeal to it, than any other.”