The vintage at Cyprus putting grapes into the vat.

The artist Sosthene Grasset D’Orset was a young Frenchman married to a local Cypriot of French descent and one of the first ethnographers of Cyprus. He came to Cyprus in 1860 and stayed probably until 1868. He made various illustrations of Cyprus which accompanied his articles published after his departure from the island in various French magazines. In an article in L’Illustation in 1878, he claimed that the Cypriots were a nation of drunkards, the women being no exception. The article was accompanied by a drawing titled Les Vendanges dans l’ile de Chypre-aspect d’une Phenecha. The same picture was published the same year in Le Monde Illustre. It gives a plethora of information about Cyprus but also depicts some unreal features: It shows a large pithari (clay storage barrel), baskets used for carrying crops, a donkey, traditionally dressed women, mostly bare foot and one of whom carries a basket of grapes on her head. The men are shown with kofines (large, deep wicker baskets) and wear a long kerchief to protect their necks from the burning sun. However, Grasset could not refrain from decorating his main female figure with a necklace. Her posture is upright and proud, despite the weight of two baskets full of grapes and is hardly representative of a poor labouring peasant woman. Grasset borrowed the postures, often clothes and accessories of habitues of the Paris salons, (those to whom he was addressing his pictures), for his Cypriots . He thus believed that he could interest them more in Cyprus and persuade them to follow the idea of France regaining Cyprus.