John Leslie Breck is remembered as one of the first American artists to fully adopt the Impressionist ideals espoused by Claude Monet. In his seminal study on American artists who studied in Giverny, William H. Gerdts argues that Breck was the first to address this new artistic sensibility. Among Breck's earliest works are a series of paintings depicting grain stacks at different times of day, elaborating on Monet's goal of capturing the instantaneous light and essence of a scene. Embracing this aesthetic approach, Breck created fourteen canvases—now in the Terra Foundation for American Art's collection—that capture Giverny's grain stacks using a palette ranging from cool cobalt blue to fiery crimson and orange.

Born at sea in the South Pacific to a ship's captain, Breck's early life followed the trajectory of a comfortable Boston family, marked by his father's tragic death when Breck was five. Family resources enabled his traditional artistic training, first at Governor Dummer and St. Mark's School, and subsequently in European academies. He studied at the academies in Munich and Antwerp and at the renowned Académie Julian in Paris, studying under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Joseph Lefebvre. His early career was distinguished by two paintings exhibited at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, with one earning an "Honorable Mention." Though brief, Breck's mature career included prominent exhibitions in Boston and New York. The 1893 Boston exhibition prompted the Boston Daily Globe to declare him the "Head of the American Impressionists," sparking a fierce controversy between traditional and emerging landscape painting styles.

The present canvas, depicting white asters, is affixed to an American-made stretcher and framed by William Allerton of Boston; it was likely painted near Breck's Auburndale, Massachusetts home.