Hassam had moved to France to study figure drawing and painting at the prestigious Académie Julian. He took advantage of the formal drawing classes with Gustave Boulanger and Jules Joseph Lefebvre, but quickly moved on to self-study, finding that "Julian academy is the personification of routine...[academic training crushes all originality out of growing men. It tends to put them in a rut and it keeps them in it", preferring instead, "my own method in the same degree". His first Parisian works were street scenes, employing a mostly brown palette. He sent these works back to Boston and their sale, combined with that of older watercolors, provided him with sufficient income to sustain his stay abroad. In the autumn of 1887, Hassam painted two versions of "Grand Prix Day", employing a breakthrough change of palette. In this dramatic change of technique, he was laying softer, more diffuse colors to canvas, similar to the French Impressionists, creating scenes full of light, done with freer brush strokes. He was likely inspired by French Impressionist paintings which he viewed in museums and exhibitions, though he did not meet any of the artists. Hassam eventually became one of the group of American Impressionists known as "The Ten".