Gustave Caillebotte 1848-1894

Caillebotte's painting career slowed dramatically in the 1890s, when he stopped making large canvasses and showing his work. He acquired a property at Petit Gennevilliers, on the banks of the Seine near Argenteuil, and moved there permanently in 1888.

Caillebotte was not only a painter, but also a racing yachtsman who had a passion for speed and continually seeked to improve his boats. Being a naval architect, he drew and built his own boats in a workshop where he created true thorough-breds of the river, with which he earned many international titles. He contributed to the boat building craft with multiple innovations like silk veil, external ballast, aerodynamic hulls, etc.

Also being a highly skilled horticulturist, he devoted himself to gardening and created a large variety of orchids in his greenhouses. During this period, he corresponded with Monet at Giverny and spent much time with his brother, Marital, and his friend Renoir, who often came to stay at Petit Gennevilliers. Caillebotte died of pulmonary congestion, while working in his garden at Petit Gennevilliers in 1894, and was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Gustave Caillebotte was for many years considered a minor Impressionist by art historians and it is only about seventy years after his death, that his role in the history of art was re-evaluated. Although he participated in many Impressionist exhibitions, he was noted mainly for his largess as a collector and as a patron of Impressionist artists. He not only financed Impressionist exhibitions, but he introduced Impressionism to French museums by bequeathing 40 masterpieces from his collection.

In his will, Caillebotte donated a large collection to the French government. This collection included sixty-eight paintings by various artists: Camille Pissarro (nineteen), Claude Monet (fourteen), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (ten), Alfred Sisley (nine), Edgar Degas (seven), Paul Cézanne (five), and Édouard Manet (four).

At the time of Caillebotte's death, the Impressionists were still largely condemned by the art establishment in France, which was dominated by Academic art and specifically the Académie des beaux-arts. Because of this, Caillebotte realised that the cultural treasures in his collection would likely disappear into "attics" and "provincial museums". He therefore stipulated that they must be displayed in the Luxembourg Palace (devoted to the work of living artists), and then in the Louvre.

Unfortunately, the French government would not agree to these terms. In February 1896, they finally negotiated terms with Renoir, who was the will's executor, under which they took thirty-eight of the paintings to the Luxembourg. The remaining twenty-nine paintings (one was taken by Renoir in payment for his services as executor) were offered to the French government twice more, in 1904 and 1908, and were both times refused. When the government finally attempted to claim them in 1928, the bequest was repudiated by the widow of Caillebotte's son. Most of the remaining works were purchased by Albert C. Barnes, and are now held by the Barnes Foundation of Philadelphia.

Forty of Caillebotte's own works are now held by the Musée d'Orsay. His L'Homme au balcon, boulevard Haussmann, painted in 1880, sold for more than $14.3 million in 2000.

Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894)

Gustave Caillebotte was born August 19, 1848, in Paris into a wealthy family which made its fortune in the textiles industry and later in the real estate business as Paris was being rebuilt after the Prussian war of 1870-71. Caillebotte's father had been twice widowed before marrying Caillebotte's mother, Céleste Daufresne, who had two more sons after Gustave, René and Martial. Caillebotte was born at his family's home on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis in Paris, and lived on that street until 1866 when his father had a home built on rue de Miromesnil in Paris. Gustave was the eldest of three sons, and he was still a teenager when he began to work on a law degree.

In 1860, the Caillebottes began spending many of their summers in Yerres, a town on the Yerres River about 12 miles south of Paris, where Caillebotte's father had bought a large property. It was probably around this time that Caillebotte began to draw and paint. Many of his paintings depict members of his family and daily domestic life; Young Man at His Window, 1875, shows René in the home on rue de Miromesnil, The Orange Trees, 1878, depicts Martial Jr. and his cousin Zoë in the garden of the family property at Yerres, and Portraits in the Country, 1875, includes Caillebotte's mother along with his aunt, cousin, and a family friend.

Apparently, Caillebotte had not planned as a young man to become an artist. While a student from age 9 to 14, he excelled in literary subjects, and he did so well in studying the law that he received his degree in 1868 at the young age of 21 and a license to practice law in 1870. He was, however, drafted to fight in the Franco-Prussian war shortly afterwards, and he served in the Garde Nationale Mobile de la Seine. After the war, Caillebotte attended the studio of painter Léon Bonnat, where he began to study painting in earnest.

In 1873, Caillebotte entered into the École des Beaux-Arts, but apparently did not spend much time there. At around this time, Caillebotte met and befriended several artists working outside the official French academy, namely Edgar Degas, Giuseppe de Nittis, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In 1874 he helped organize the first impressionist exhibition in Paris, but did not participate in it himself.

In 1875, as he wished to make his public beginnings as a painter, he submitted a work to the Official Salon which was refused, thus encouraging him to exhibit in 1876, with the aid of Renoir, at the second exhibition of the Impressionist group. His works, and in particular "The floor scrapers", were noticed and appreciated. Consequently, he co-organised, financed and participated in later shows and painted some 500 works in a more realistic style than that of his friends.

Caillebotte's sizeable allowance and inheritance after the death of his father in 1863, allowed him to paint without the pressure to sell his work. It also allowed him to help fund Impressionist Exhibitions and support his fellow artists and friends by purchasing their works and, at least in the case of Monet, paying the rent for their studios. His business skills and financial assistance were important to the survival of Impressionism.

In addition, Caillebotte used his wealth to fund a variety of hobbies for which he was quite passionate, including stamp collecting (his collection is now in the British Museum), orchid horticulture, yacht building, and even textile design (the women in his paintings Madame Boissière Knitting, 1877, and Portrait of Madame Caillebotte, 1877, may be working on patterns created by Caillebotte).

Caillebotte's style belongs to the school of Realism and his aim was to paint reality as it existed and as he saw it, hoping to reduce the inherent theatricality in painting. He incorporated into his works the psychological effects of new environments on individual lives, particularly the sense of isolation and the effects of idleness on a new economic class. He also shared the Impressionists' committment to optical truth. Caillebotte painted many domestic, familial scenes, interiors, and figures in a landscape at Yerres, but he is most well known for his paintings of urban Paris, such as Le pont de l'Europe, 1876, and Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877. The latter painting evokes the orderly rectangles and star-burst intersections that epitomized Paris' new quarters. In the foreground, a couple sharing an umbrella do not relate to each other, but look off into the distance. Executed in muted shades of gray and beige, the street is sparsely populated and the areas of empty space add to a sense of detachment.

These paintings were quite controversial for their banal and often lower-class subjects, and for their exaggerated, plunging perspective. The tilted ground common to these paintings is very characteristic of Caillebotte's work, which may have been strongly influenced by Japanese prints and the new technology of photography. Cropping and "zooming in," techniques which are also commonly found in Caillebotte's oeuvre, may also be the result of his interest in photography. A large number of Caillebotte's works also employ a very high vantage point, including his many balcony paintings such as Vue des toits, 1878, and effet de neige, 1880.

Street scenes, viewed from Caillebotte's apartment on Boulevard Haussmann, often appear empty and silent, as if drained of the reality of an urban metropolis. In opposition to works by Monet or Renoir who cloak the harshness of the street in foliage and sparkling light, Caillebotte's exaggerated perspectives and bleached light expose a harsher new city. Balcony views, incorporating interiors and exteriors, were also favoured by the artists of this period. Impressionists, for the most part, used it as a device to depict the penetration of light in a room. Caillebotte's balcony views, however, emphasized the psychological contrasts between the interior and the exterior world. In The Man at the Window, the lush red chair and colourful carpet of the interior is in sharp contrast to the muted grays and whites of the street below.

The effects of idle lives on a new economic class is a recurrent theme in Caillebotte's works. Depicted either contemplating the external urban scene or casually posed amongst luxurious surroundings, fashionably dressed men and women read books and newspapers, played the piano, wrote in their studies or engaged in needlework. Their homes were the symbol of stability and acquired wealth and Caillebotte highlighted the lush textures and designs of their interiors. In Luncheon, a table laden with gleaming crystal and silver treats objects valued by the new bourgeoisie.

Like many of his colleagues, Caillebotte not only depicted urban scenes, portraits and interior views, he painted still lifes, landscapes and seascapes as well. He produced countless country scenes, often working together with his fellow artists. Even in the country, however, nature competed with industrialization. Caillebotte emphasizes the dire effects in Factories at Aregenteuil, where his austere image is at odds with the Impres-sionist's lyrical view of nature. Here, the blue of the Seine has turned shades of grey and black, deadened by the reflections of factories and smokestacks.

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