In Sunlit Interior, Will Howe Foote depicts a domestic scene within his home in Old Lyme, Connecticut. Located on the east bank of the mouth of the Connecticut River, the town became the site of an artist’s colony for American Impressionists. Foote first visited Old Lyme in 1901. He settled there permanently in 1907, and worked alongside other American Impressionists.

Born in Grand Rapids, Will Howe Foote was the son of furniture industry executive E.H. Foote, and the nephew of the well-known painter William Henry Howe. In addition, his aunt was Grand Rapids Art Museum founder Mrs. Cyrus E. Perkins. In 1894, Foote studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, becoming friends with fellow Michigan native Frederick Frieseke. The following year both Foote and Frieseke moved to New York, where they enrolled in the famous Art Students’ League, Foote studying with Kenyon Cox and H. Siddons Mowbray. In 1897 Foote was again accompanied by Frieseke to Paris, where both enrolled in the Académie Julian, and studied briefly with James McNeill Whistler.