The present panneaux are the incomplete first version of a four-part work, the second, modified version of which is preserved in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The panels were initially intended for a four-part screen, but Bonnard disassembled it because the individual panneaux seemed too much like 'pictures' to him.
The woman on the first panel cannot be identified; in the second, his younger sister Andrée can be recognized, and in the two back figures, cousin Berthe Schaedlin.
'Femmes au Jardin' represents Bonnard's first important work in the Nabis style.