Tissot treats the theme of social awkwardness with affectionate
humour. Coming to London in 1871 after the fall of the Paris
Commune, he had stayed with Vanity Fair's editor Thomas Gibson Bowles and worked as a staff artist on the magazine: Too Early was among the first of his immensely popular pictures inspired by magazine illustrations of society subjects. The picture has an immediacy and informality that reflects Tissot's contacts with Degas and the Impressionists. All the participants - like the mistress instructing the musicians or the giggling maids peeping round the door - are caught off guard as if in a snapshot, a sensation emphasised by the way the light glances off the spectacles of one of the musicians.