Gustave Caillebotte has been regarded for a long time as an unusual artist among the French Impressionists. Both his life and his art are quite different from his
colleagues.37 During his life-time, Caillebotte is, due to his exceptional economic
33 Kirk Varnedoe, Gustave Caillebotte, New Haven 1987, p. 92.
34 Brussels, Paul Rouffart’s private collection, gouache and watercolor, 9 x 17.2 cm; Robert L. Delevoy, Fernand Khnopff, Brussels 1987, p. 213; Sharon L. Hirsh, Symbolism and modern urban society, Cambridge 2004, p. 97.
35 Sharon L. Hirsh, Symbolism and modern urban society, Cambridge 2004, p. 97.
36 Rodolphe Rapetti, “Paris Seen from a Window,” in: Anne Dayez-Distel, Gustave Caillebotte: urban impressionist, exhibition catalog, Paris–Chicago–Los Angeles 1994/95, New York 1995, pp. 145–146.
37 Kirk Varnedoe, Gustave Caillebotte, New Haven 1987, p. 1.
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possibilities, an important patron of the French Impressionists.38 He is on good terms with Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas and Camille Pissarro, of whom he is friend, colleague and patron at the same time.39
Compared to these friends, Caillebotte had a relatively short albeit fulfilled life which lasted only 46 years. In addition to his role as a patron of the Impressionists, he himself is an accomplished painter, too. Although Caillebotte’s name is usually associated with Impressionism, his painting style and, occasionally, his subject matters are much closer to the French Realists.40 Being wealthy enough to support not only himself but also others and practicing an untypical approach, Caillebotte is a peculiar figure in the circle of the Impressionists.
Born on August 19, 1848 in Paris, Gustave Caillebotte grew up in an environment of wealth and privilege.41 His father Martial is a successful textile merchant.42 Gustave was first trained as a lawyer and, in 1868, was bestowed a bachelor degree of law.43 Three years later, in 1872, he made a significant change in his career from law to art, enrolling at the É cole des Beaux-Arts in the class of Léon Bonnat, a renowned portrait painter. However, there are no records which mention Caillebotte’s works at the Academy. According to Kirk Varnedoe, it might be supposed that his presence in the class was quite limited.44 He, obviously, did not show much interest in the academic training, but turning his attention to the anti-academic rebels, who were later known as the Impressionists.
1874 was the crucial year in Caillebotte’s early artistic development. In that year,
38 The inventory of Gustave Caillebotte’s collection was published by the French art critic Gustave Geffroy (1855–1926) in 1894, and reprinted in Gustave Geffroy, Claude Monet, sa vie, son temps, son œuvre, Paris 1922, pp. 178–179.
39 Kirk Varnedoe, Gustave Caillebotte, New Haven 1987, p. 4.
40 Gabriel P. Weisberg, The realist tradition: French painting and drawing, 1830–1900, Cleveland 1980, p. 278.
41 Marie Berhaut, Gustave Caillebotte: catalogue raisonné des peintures et pastels, Paris 1994, p. 3.
42 Ibid.
43 Anne Dayez-Distel, Gustave Caillebotte: urban impressionist, New York 1995, p. 312.
44 Kirk Varnedoe, Gustave Caillebotte, New Haven 1987, p. 2.
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he met Edgar Degas, a friend of his teacher Léon Bonnat, at the house of their common friend, the Italian Impressionist Giuseppe de Nittis, and invited him to participate in the First Impressionist Exhibition at the Nadar Gallery in Paris.45 Though he did not present his own works, Caillebotte had the opportunity to witness the works of the leading figures of the group shown at the First Impressionist
Exhibition in 1874, such as the paintings by Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Edgar Degas.46 After the death of his father in the same year, Caillebotte inherited a sizable fortune.47 Being financially and artistically independent, some of his earliest masterpieces were executed between 1875 and 1877. April 1876 marked Caillebotte’s debut as a participant in the Impressionist Exhibition. He presented eight works at the group’s second show, one of which is The Floor Scrapers of 1875 (fig. 1), one of Caillebotte’s most representative paintings which, subsequently, becomes a sort of an icon of the painter. Other works, such as Young Man Playing the Piano (Jeune homme au piano) of 1876 (Tokyo, Bridgestone Museum of Art; fig. 20),48 Young Man at His Window (Jeune homme à sa fenêtre) of 1875 (New York, private collection; fig.
21)49 and Luncheon (Le Déjeuner) of 1876 (Paris, private collection; fig. 22)50
present bourgeois interiors of a same apartment where the depicted room in The Floor Scrapers is located.51
As a key promoter of the Impressionist painters, Caillebotte helped to organize
45 Anne Dayez-Distel, Gustave Caillebotte: urban impressionist, New York 1995, p. 312.
46 Gabriel P. Weisberg, The realist tradition: French painting and drawing, 1830–1900, Cleveland 1980, p. 278.
47 Anne Dayez-Distel, Gustave Caillebotte: urban impressionist, New York 1995, p. 312.
48 Tokyo, Bridgestone Museum of Art, oil on canvas, 80 x 116 cm, signature and date bottom left: “G.
Caillebotte 1876;” information from Bridgestone Museum of Art at http://www.bridgestone-museum.gr.jp/en/collection/.
49 New York, private collection, oil on canvas, 117 x 82 cm, signature and date bottom left: “G.
Caillebotte 1875.”
50 Paris, private collection, oil on canvas, 52 x 75 cm, signature and date bottom right: “G. Caillebotte 1876”; Marie Berhaut, Gustave Caillebotte: catalogue raisonné des peintures et pastels, Paris 1994, p.
79, no. 37.
51 Ibid., pp. 148, 193, 194.
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and finance the following exhibitions of the years 1877 and 1879.52 He participated five times until 1882. Caillebotte has been continuing his distinctive use of a dropping perspective and unanticipated angles of view in two large-scale paintings representing Paris’s modern street scenes shown at the 1877 exhibition – Paris Street; Rainy Day of 1877 (fig. 3) and The Pont de l’Europe of 1876 (fig. 2).53 Some changes on viewpoints in Caillebotte’s cityscape paintings have been made since the late 1870s.
With his brother Martial, Caillebotte moved to a flat located at the Boulevard Haussmann in 1879.54 From then on, he started to depict views of the Boulevard Haussmann from an elevated viewpoint. For example, two works of 1880, Boulevard Haussmann, Snow (Boulevard Haussmann, effet de neige; Paris, private collection; fig.
23)55 and Man on a Balcony, Boulevard Haussmann (fig. 12),56 present the spaciously laid out road seen from the balcony of Caillebotte’s apartment.
After Caillebotte’s last participation at the Impressionist Exhibition in March 1882, he spent more time at his estate of Petit-Gennevilliers near Argenteuil, where he became interested in sailboats.57 The paintings executed during this period at
Petit-Gennevilliers no longer show the urban landscapes; instead, scenes of the Seine, the countryside, gardens, seascapes and sailboats become his favorite themes.
Different from the previous canvases which were rendered in realistic approach, Caillebotte’s works after 1880 are obviously painted in a much looser manner and reveal more Impressionist qualities. The Sailboats at Argenteuil (Voiliers à Argenteuil) of 1888 (Paris, Musée d’Orsay; fig. 24),58 for example, shows his applications of
52 Ibid, pp. 313–314.
53 Ibid., pp. 102, 116.
54 Ibid, p. 314.
55 Kirk Varnedoe, Gustave Caillebotte, New Haven 1987, p. 152.
56 Anne Dayez-Distel, Gustave Caillebotte: urban impressionist, New York 1995, p. 168.
57 Ibid., p. 315.
58 Paris, Musée d’Orsay, oil on canvas, 65 x 55.5 cm, Inv. RF 1954 31, signature bottom right: “G.
Caillebotte”; notice de l’œuvre from Musée d’Orsay at
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/collections/catalogue-des-oeuvres/notice.html?no_cache=1&nnumid=108
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bright colors and loose brushwork as well as his concerns in outdoor light. These are artistic features widely identified in the typical Impressionist works. In 1888, three new buildings were constructed at Petit-Gennevilliers, and the property became Caillebotte’s primary residence;59 He, then, paid much effort in gardening. At the meantime, Caillebotte produced numerous paintings on different flowers during the first years of the 1890s. In February 1894, Caillebotte died suddenly from apoplexy at his home in Petit-Gennevilliers.60
As a major patron of the Impressionists, Caillebotte bought a huge number of paintings executed by his friends. His art collection includes the Impressionists’
masterpieces such as Auguste Renoir’s Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du Moulin de la Galette) of 1876 (fig. 25), Claude Monet’s Saint-Lazare Station (La gare Saint-Lazare) of 1877 (fig. 26), Edouard Manet’s Balcony (Le balcon) of 1869 (fig. 27) and Edgar Degas’s Ballet (The Star) of 1876 (fig. 28; all Paris, Musée d’Orsay).61 In his first will of 3 November 1876, Caillebotte, with assertive words, bestowed his collection to the Musée du Luxembourg and determined that it should later be transferred to the Louvre:
“I give to the state the pictures I own; only as I want that this gift to be accepted, and accepted in such a way that the paintings go neither into an attic nor to a provincial museum but right to the Luxembourg and later to the Louvre, it is necessary that a certain time go by before execution of this clause, until the public may, I don’t say understand, but accept this painting.”62
90.
59 Anne Dayez-Distel, Gustave Caillebotte: urban impressionist, New York 1995, p. 317.
60 Ibid, p. 318.
61 Kirk Varnedoe, Gustave Caillebotte, New Haven 1987, p. 198. The paintings’ descriptions are as follows: Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Bal du moulin de la Galette), 1876, oil on canvas, 131 x 175 cm; Claude Monet, The Saint-Lazare Station, 1877, oil on canvas, 75 x 105 cm;
Edouard Manet, The Balcony (Le balcon), 1868-1869, oil on canvas, 170 x 124.5 cm; Edgar Degas, Ballet (The Star), 1876, pastel, 58.4 x 42 cm, all Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
62 English translation quoted after Kirk Varnedoe; ibid., p. 197. The original French text quoted by Marie Berhaut in Caillebotte, sa vie et son œuvre, catalogue raisonné des peintures et pastels, Paris 1978, p. 281 is as follows: “Je donne à l’Etat les tableaux que je possède, seulement comme je veux
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Caillebotte anticipated that the state would hardly accept the avant-garde paintings in his possession, but he insisted that these paintings were worthwhile to be introduced to as well as appreciated by a wider audience. As he had suggested, only 38 of his 67 Impressionists works were accepted by the Musée du Luxembourg.63 In 1986, the collection was moved to Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where it forms a crucial part of the museum’s Impressionist collection.64
4. Caillebotte’s Works in the Years 1875–77