Julie Pissarro beim Erbsenschälen

Julie Vellay had been a kitchen maid in the household of Pissarro's mother when the two met. By 1877, the year of this picture, they were married and living at Pontoise north-west of Paris, with a growing family and almost no money coming in.

She kept the vegetable plot and sold what it produced, which is part of why the household held together while he painted. Here she is shelling peas at home.

That spring Pissarro sent 22 canvases to the third Impressionist exhibition in Paris and sold next to nothing.

The painting is in Baden in Switzerland, in the villa of Sidney and Jenny Brown, who bought French pictures like this one in the years around 1910 and left the house and its contents as a museum.