Eugène Manet et sa fille dans le jardin de Bougival

In the summer of 1881 the Manets rented a house at Bougival, on the Seine just west of Paris, and Berthe Morisot set up in the garden. The man bent over the small girl is her husband, Eugène Manet, younger brother of the painter Édouard Manet. The child is their only daughter, Julie, about three years old. He is doing something ordinary and, for a man of his class then, slightly unusual: minding a toddler, showing her a little cluster of toy houses on the grass. Morisot painted her own household constantly, and she painted it loosely, letting the greens dissolve at the edges. Julie grew up to keep a diary of this Impressionist circle, and was orphaned by 16, both parents gone.