Gustave Caillebotte is one of the least-known Impressionists. Even the Impressionists had hardly heard of him until he submitted a painting to the official exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris in 1875. It was a painting of floor scrapers working in an apartment, stripped to the waist, a bottle of wine on a shelf nearby, and an open window illuminating their bodies and the wood floor. The painting was promptly rejected by the exhibition’s jury as being a crude and inappropriate subject for a work of “art” and, God forbid, bordering on realism!
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| The Floor Scrapers, 1875, © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY |
This opinion was not shared by Degas and Renoir who were entranced by the painting and invited Caillebotte to exhibit with them and other “Impressionists” (sometimes called “Independents”) who had been similarly snubbed by the Academy. Nor was the Academy’s opinion shared by the general public. At the 1876 exhibition mounted by the Impressionists, the floor scrapers were a definite hit. Thus introduced into the circle of the Impressionists, Caillebotte was deeply influenced by their own visions of what “art” might encompass. He became highly influential in their circle and was much admired not only by Degas and Renoir but by many other Impressionists such as Monet, Pissarro and Sisley.
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| On the Pont de l’Europe, 1876–1877, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth |
Before falling in with the Impressionists, Caillebotte was more associated with the School of Realism although he quickly developed his own distinctive style. In his early years, he mostly painted what he found in the city and in the streets around him. They have a certain weight and solidity about them combined with a flat, smooth quality that is almost photographic, as in the above painting of the Pont de L’Europe. (Caillebotte was intrigued by the new technology of photography and this might possibly have had some influence on him).
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| Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877, Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago |
At the same time, his city scenes had some impressionistic qualities (as in the painting above) where the shimmering surface of wet cobbles, misty blue buildings and umbrellas are contrasted with the dark and rather smug, fashionable figures in the forefront. On the surface, Caillebotte seems to be comfortable with his bourgeois surroundings; but many of his family portraits and indoor figures express tension and a sense of being trapped. Some of his paintings have a perspective that heightens this tension as when a woman is seen closely from behind in a tight-fitting black dress staring out of a window, ignored by a man in an armchair reading his newspaper; or his brother, pictured playing a piano that seems about to overwhelm him. I think he was ready to meet the Impressionists!
Caillebotte was obviously very much influenced by the Impressionists. As he progressed, his paintings reflect different styles and combinations of the realistic and impressionistic, as though he was constantly experimenting (warring?) with these two contrasting styles. This is particularly noticeable when you contrast his “city" paintings (which we have seen above) with his much softer and more impressionistic “rural” paintings, like the one below, of fields in Gennevilliers where he bought a country house in the 1880s.
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| The Fields, a Plain in Gennevilliers, 1884. Photograph courtesy of the Denver Art Museum |
It is almost hard to believe that it is the same painter. His palette becomes much more vivid when painting the natural world as opposed to the stiffer city world. Look at his study (below) of fruits laid out on a market stand. It is full of robust colors and you can almost smell and taste that fruit even though it is rendered in the most impressionistic fashion. It is like he has escaped.
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| Fruit Displayed on a Stand, c. 1881–1882. © 2015 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
That sense of escape becomes more apparent when he starts his series of paintings centered on river boating at Yerres. He became a passionate rower and even built boats. Below is the one photo that I was able to take of Caillebotte’s work. It was part of an exhibition on Degas and Mary Cassatt last year. It belongs to the National Gallery of Art and is part of its permanent collection. You are allowed to take photos of anything in its permanent collection and I have hundreds of them!
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| My photo of Boaters on the Yerres, 1877. National Gallery of Art |
I like this painting because it still retains some of the formality of his city paintings but conveys movement and light in a different way. I like to think of it as a “hybrid”, a blending of the two quite distinct styles that he constantly struggled with. In many respects, he was more versatile than the other Impressionists and sometimes had the capacity to shock. Look at his take on the traditional “baigneuse”. He has turned her into a “baigneur” and while painted in an impressionistic style you cannot help but feel this rather gristly man is all to real! Was he taking a swipe at Degas and his nudes?
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Man at His Bath, 1884. © 2015 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Caillebotte never married but is supposed to have had a long relationship with Charlotte Berthier, a much younger woman “of the lower class” to whom he left a sizeable annuity. See more information on his life at:
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Unlike most of the other Impressionists, Caillebotte came from a wealthy family and did not need to sell his paintings or live the life of an ordinary artist. In fact, he bought and collected the works of his fellow Impressionists, helped finance many of them (especially Monet) and organized their many popular exhibitions. Ironically, he did not become well known in his own day for these very reasons. He also had the misfortune to die at the age of 45 in 1894. He left his own paintings and those of his fellow Impressionists to the French State, becoming further “buried” in the background.
However, he has now come out of the shadows and the exhibition at the National Gallery of Art presents his work in a highly convincing and interesting fashion. Have a look at the National Gallery website for more information and more photos of his paintings; and definitely look at the brochure for the exhibition at:
There is also an interesting review of the exhibition in the New York Times at:
I will leave you with this painting that I think combines everything that is wonderful about his distinctive style--a forgotten realist and a discovered Impressionist in one!
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| Rooftops in the Snow, Paris, 1878. Musee d'Orsay |
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