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In 1895 Samuel Bing, owner of the Art Nouveau Gallery in Paris, commissioned József Rippl-Rónai, the Hungarian artist then living in Paris, to produce a volume of drawings. The lithographs were published in the company of poems explicitly written for these drawings by Georges Rodenbach under the title Les Vierges. The theme of women in a garden was often taken up by the Nabis, a group of modern painters to which Rippl-Rónai also belonged. Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard, Paul Ranson and other members laid emphasis on inner felicity and a feeling of constancy. The pattern always filled out the picture plain evenly, and the design was characterized by the rhythm of decorative contours. The pictorial interaction between mood and idea in Rippl-Rónai's drawing Women in the Garden (Walking Women) is symbolized by the walking female figure, a representation of fertility. The same theme was later varied in a gobelin design.
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