One of the few etchings which Cézanne produced in 1873 on the encouragement of Dr Paul Gachet, an amateur artist, friend and collector of the emerging group of Impressionist painters. Though watercolour rather than etching or lithography became a preferred medium for Cézanne, this informal print captures one of his close associates at a particularly happy time in his life.

The friendship with the French landscape painter Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927) began in the early 1860s in Paris, and was later notably marked by the inclusion of a landscape by Guillaumin as the background of a 'Self-Portrait' c.1873 (Musée D'Orsay) and a full-scale copy of Guillaumin's landscape 'The Seine at Bercy' c.1877 (Kunsthalle, Hamburg). Here Cézanne shows his drawing of 'The Hanging' attached to a suggested wall behind Guillaumin.