Ice skating was a fashionable pastime in Paris during the second half of the nineteenth century. As the sport grew in numbers, enthusiasts soon tired of unreliable natural rinks, such as the frozen lakes in the Bois de Boulogne, and, following the construction of the first artifical rink in London, the Palais de Glace was built near the Champs Elysées in 1889.

Chéret's series of posters advertising this artifical rink show well-dressed and vivacious young men and women enjoying themsleves on the ice, underscoring both the novelty of the activity but also the fact that controlled conditions in the modern covered rink lent themselves particularly well to the sartorially-minded.