When Durand de Brêtizel bought the Bachivillers estate in 1800 he found a modest country house of several adjoining rooms. Outbuildings, - stables, byres, sheep folds and barns framed a large courtyard.  Two years later he knocked down the house and constructed a new house with rebuilt dependencies set further back. The work was done between 1808 and 1825 under the supervision of the estate farmer Jean-Baptiste Crévecoeur who bought the château from the Brétizel family in 1838.

The estate was put on the market after World War One and now belongs to the Dornès family. The château is a pleasant, well-proportioned manor house of red brick with grey stone trim. A central three-story block has two story wings on each side.
In the 1890s, following a suggestion by Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt looked for a summer residence in the Vexin region. She discovered Bachivillers and spent three summers there, 1891, 1892 and 1893. Unfortunately, the owner married and his new wife insisted on living in the château herself. Very disappointed, Mary had to look for another country retreat and in 1894 she bought the Château de Beaufresne in Mesnil-Théribus. She lived there mainly in the summer, until her death in 1926.

During her last summer in Bachivillers in 1893, she received an unexpected commission for the Women’s Pavilion at the Chicago World's Fair She was asked to paint a monumental allegory to the glory of Modern Women. Mary Fairchild MacMonnies was to paint a facing mural on Primitive Woman. After some hesitation due to the scale of the commission, she accepted and had a deep trench dug in the château’s greenhouse, which had been converted into a studio, to avoid having to paint from the top of a ladder. A pulley system was installed to handle the triptych. The task was immense, and she enlisted an assistant for the decorative borders and a canvas expert to address technical issues related to the support and frame. She completed the work on time in six months. Mary had received little precise guidance on the proposed theme and chose a pastoral scene depicting women and girls in an orchard picking fruit, symbols of knowledge and wisdom.
She sent the work to Chicago in 1893 but did not attend the inauguration. The reception was mixed, as the stylistic divergence between the two tympana and the lack of harmony were too pronounced. After dismantling, the panels were stored but got severely damaged. By 1911 all trace of the work was lost. The only remaining evidence of this monumental effort is the painting Young Women Picking Fruit (Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art), inspired by the central panel.

Mary Fairchild MacMonnies, Primitive Woman and Mary Cassatt, Modern Woman. Photographs from M. H. Elliot, ed., Art and Handicraft at the Woman’s Building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, p. 35

Her mural disappeared after the exhibition and there remains only one painting referencing this monumental work - her canvas Young Woman Picking Fruit (Pittsburg, Carnegie Museum of Art) which was inspired by the central panel. Cassatt sent the mural to Chicago in 1893 but didn’t attend the inauguration.