This oil sketch is closely related to, and may be a preparatory study for, a large painting of The Virgin and Child in a Spring Landscape, signed and dated 1907, formerly in the Henri Aubry collection in Paris. The main difference is that in the present work the figures surround a statue of the Virgin, while in the painting the statue is replaced by the seated Virgin and Child. The landscape depicted in both painting and sketch is the hillside of Mareil, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The composition of this oil sketch is also related to The Madonna, one of four panels of the decorative scheme entitled Eternal Spring, painted in 1908 for the dining room of the villa of Denis’ patron Gabriel Thomas at Meudon and today in the Musée Départemental Maurice Denis in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. The painted panel, like the present sketch, depicts nuns and young communicants gathered around the Virgin and Child in a landscape, although unlike the oil sketch it is vertical in format.