This drawing originated from the album of Natalya Alexandrovna Herzen, the writer’s daughter. The album contains dozens of individual pages, each featuring drawings, caricatures, pencil sketches, watercolors, gouaches, and pen drawings with delicate shading. Some of these pages are signed “N. Herzen”. Natalya Herzen depicted many scenes from the life of her family, which often had to relocate. In the displayed drawing, she depicted herself with her father, Alexander Herzen. They walk along the embankment of Lake Geneva in Switzerland with their backs to the viewer. The scene takes place in early April of 1866. That year, the spring in Montreux was unusually cold. Alexander Herzen is dressed in a coat and a fur hat. His daughter Natalya wears a puffy dress and a vest. Among her drawings, there are several depictions of the father and daughter walking together. She signed one of these with the words,

Alexander Herzen did not enjoy his time in Montreux and referred to it as an “exile.” He also criticized Basel, another city in Switzerland,

For a permanent residence, Alexander Herzen chose Geneva. However, after Paris and London, it seemed small and provincial to him. James Fazy, the president of the canton, contributed to the writer’s decision to move to Geneva. He helped the writer obtain a permit to stay there. Alexander Herzen described Fazy as “perhaps, one of the last intelligent men in Geneva.”

Still, Alexander Herzen found some advantages to living in Switzerland. He wrote,

Vladimir Nabokov lived in Montreux for a long time, from 1960 until his death in 1977. Together with his wife Véra Nabokova, the writer lived in a room at the Montreux Palace Hotel.