Julie MANET (1878-1966) View of Essoyes, grape-pickers, October 1898 Oil on canvas. Unsigned. Handwritten inscription on the reverse, in chalk on the canvas: "Melle Manet". 54.5 x 65 cm Provenance : Gabriel Thomas Collection. By descent. Julie Manet painted this scene at the end of a stay in Essoyes from September 7 to October 24, 1898, in the company of her cousins Jeannie and Paule Gobillard. cousins Jeannie and Paule Gobillard and near the house of Auguste Renoir, whom she referred to in her Diary as "our teacher". "our teacher" (Julie Manet, Diary, ed. 2017, Wednesday, October 5, 1898, p. 372). She will soon turn 20 on November 14. This stay is saddened and interrupted by the news of the death of their friend Stéphane Mallarmé. The oil painting on the motif is prepared by a watercolor on Thursday, October 6, and precisely located by Julie: "All morning in the Brotel vineyards on the côte de Mellet, picking grapes and painting watercolors. The light is delightful, the hillsides shrouded behind golden vines, superb with figures in them and strewn with hoods of purple grapes. purple grapes. What beautiful things to paint. The young girls with their colored complexions in these vineyards against the backdrop of Essoyes look like an Italian fresco" (id., p. 373). Julie finished it in Essoyes, in her studio, on the following Sunday, October 23rd: "I'm thinking of the primitives, of Mantegna this morning as I finish remembering my grape-pickers" (id., p. 382). He was no less influenced by the advice of his master Renoir. The work belonged to Julie Manet's cousin, Gabriel Thomas (1854-1932), guardian of her estate, who encouraged her in her her debut at exhibitions. An important figure in the cultural milieu of the time, he was a founding member of the Eiffel Tower and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and the originator of the Musée Grévin. Expert: Dominique d'Arnoult, Doctor of Art History.