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Founded in Paris in 1791, Café Riche, located at the corner of Boulevard des Italiens and Rue Le-Peletier, was one of the city's most renowned establishments frequented by politicians, artists, writers, and other notable figures. During the café's renovation in 1894, many artists contributed to its decoration under the direction of architect Albert Ballu. The exterior walls between the windows on the café’s mezzanine level were adorned with 17 mosaic murals, created by the workshop of the Italian mosaic artist Facchina, based on cartoons by Forain. The subjects depicted in these cartoons were figures drawn from Forain's illustrations in newspapers and magazines, such as The Cyclist, The Supper, The Little Girl Selling Violets, The Paperboy, Young Woman Wearing a Hat at the Racetrack, The Waltz, The Confession at the Ball, The Woman with a Mask and Black Gloves, Forain Sketching in Trouville, and The Errand Girl of a Women’s Clothing Store. The murals depicted subjects that were relatively novel for the time. However, the French writer Goncourt lamented, “Oh! The new decoration of Café Riche, I have never seen anything so horribly ugly, with its macabre frescoes by Forain and its colorful caryatids by Raffaelli on this mishmash of Oriental and Renaissance architecture from Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Ah! My old cafés, my old restaurants, all simply unified in gold and white!” These pieces were harshly criticized for being entirely unsuitable for adorning the exterior walls of a prestigious restaurant. Due to the negative reception, Forain’s mosaic murals were removed in 1898 and auctioned off. Some of these mosaic murals and their preparatory cartoons are now housed in the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Musée Carnavalet in Paris. This piece, depicting a man in a coat holding a walking stick, is one of Forain’s cartoons for the murals at Café Riche. In The Paperboy, another work from the mural series for Café Riche, a smoldering cigar lies discarded at the feet of a young boy selling newspapers on the street. Similarly, in The Little Girl Selling Violets, the half-figure of a man in a coat and carrying a walking stick is shown passing by a little girl selling violets. The discarded cigar and the passing man both evoke the presence of the man depicted in this work, suggesting Forain’s intention to create a sense of continuity among seemingly unrelated pieces.