Around 1928 Hiler began to omit the figures from his urban views and focus on the city’s buildings as cubic forms and geometric planes. Eventually, as in Factories at Lyon, he also combined flatly painted surfaces with highly impastoed, striated areas. The textured areas often took on a life of their own, divorced from the overall scene, thereby destroying an already limited sense of painted reality. When Hiler included an occasional figure, he often presented it as a silhouette, as he did here, thereby enhancing the mysterious mood of the scene. Formally, the emphasis on textures relates to synthetic cubism while the flat, planar emphasis of the painting bears a resemblance to some of the precisionist images painted in New York in the 1920s. Not surprisingly, Hiler was a close friend of the artist Niles Spencer (1893-1952). They met in New York around 1917, and when both lived in Paris during the early 1920s they spent many hours discussing artistic issues of subject matter and geometry. However, Hiler’s own abstracted paintings demonstrate a concept invented by him, which Ezra Pound dubbed "neonaturism." As the artist explained in his book Why Abstract?, neonaturism was his attempt to combine design with representation, something which he thought was essential. Hiler felt that for a painting to be successful it had to demonstrate the "physiological appeal satisfying to man’s geometrical instinct through the use of strictly mathematical composition" ("Hiler’s Neo-Naturism in Philadelphia Show," Art Digest 8 [November 1, 1933]: 14). The painting is inscribed with the name Cagnes, which may refer to the coastal town near Nice on the French Riviera where Hiler lived occasionally during the early 1930s, although the scene has none of the spirit of the resort town. Rather, by his emphasis on geometric, industrial imagery and use of a dark, dingy palette of brown, gray, and black, Hiler captured the spirit of Lyon, which in 1930 was one of the largest cities in France and a major chemical and engineering center.

Four years after the stock market crash of 1929, which triggered the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt initiated the New Deal, a program of domestic reform meant to revive the economy and alleviate the problem of mass unemployment. Toward these ends, he established various new federal agencies, putting many more people to work to do the increased business of government. Thousands of artists were employed, most through the largest program, the Works Progress Administration. Although the government did not dictate the type of art that was to be produced, it did encourage the use of a representational style and American themes. As a result, most of the art created in the decade prior to World War II was humanistic in orientation.
Artists, writers, and philosophers of the period became obsessed with the social relevance of art. Although a small group of American artists did attack the societal ills of the nation (housing shortages, unemployment) and of the world in general (the rise of fascism and militarism), most adopted a more pragmatic and even positive attitude. American scene painters captured busy city dwellers on streets, in buses, at work, and at play. Occasionally artists infused an element of humor into the pathos of everyday existence, even in scenes that allude to the political disasters of the day. Regionalists were particularly fond of idealizing the past and aggrandizing the present accomplishments of the country. In fact, the myth of America as a country where everyone lives a pastoral, carefree existence emerged with new vigor in the art of the 1930s.
The diversity of the people also emerged as a strong current of social realism. Artists who were accustomed to working in their studios now looked beyond their immediate circles for models. Individuals of various races, professions, or creeds inspired some of the most moving portraits of the century and demonstrated the soul of the people.