This is an unfinished portrait of the celebrated artist Honoré Daumier (1808 - 1876).
Daubigny and Daumier had been friends since meeting in Paris in the 1840s. From 1863, Daumier, at Daubigny's suggestion, began to spend his summers at Valmondois, two miles north of Auvers-sur-Oise in France, and in 1865 he settled there permanently. Les Vallées, referred to in the inscription, was Daubigny's house in Auvers.
