Following his flee from Paris in 1940, Hayden took refuge from the German occupation in the South of France alongside Robert Delauney and later Samuel Beckett who would become a lifelong friend. Upon returning to his studio to find much of his work destroyed, the years 1945-48 saw an intense period of production, with work exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d’Automne. This work is an example of his landscape painting just before he began to simplify and return to a sub-Cubist sensibility throughout the 1950s, focusing on creating depth through colour rather than form. The vividness of pigment used and the distinctive manner of depicting clouds in this example foretell elements of his later work. Similarly, the feathered and almost diaphanous detail describing the fences of the garden anticipate Hayden’s regained interest in the influence of Renoir in the late 1960s, his use of line becoming wispier.