Melville first visited Paris in 1878, when he studied at the Academie Julian, making trips out of the city to the Normandy ports, and to the artist’s colony of Grez-sur-Loing, where he moved in the spring of 1879. This watercolour was executed on his 1889 visit to Paris in the company of John Singer Sargent and ‘Glasgow Boy’ E. A. Walton and James Guthrie. This atmospheric watercolour shows a fashionable Parisian lady out walking her dog in the rain. It may have been sketched near the entrance to the Exposition site; a line of cabs can be seen in the distance, waiting to take visitors home. Melville’s use of muted colours and a restricted tonal palette is reminiscent of Whistler.