On Monday mornings, Camille Pissarro often joined his wife Julie and a couple of their children, with some household helpers, for the two-and-a-half-mile excursion from their home in Éragny to attend market day in Gisors, a town of about four thousand inhabitants further down the Epte River.
While Julie stocked up on produce and provisions for the coming week, Pissarro sketched the many people from Gisors and nearby villages who gathered among the stalls set up on the Grand-Rue (today the rue de Vienne) near the town hall, as they engaged in selling, buying, or bartering, exchanging news, and socializing during this all-important, weekly communal event.