Gustave Caillebotte ENG

Artiste
Par Samuel Raybone
  • Naissance 19 Août 1848, Paris
  • Mort 21 Fév 1894, Gennevilliers
  • Nationalité French

Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait de l'artiste, vers 1892, huile sur toile, 40,5 x 32,5 cm, achat avec les fonds d'une donation anonyme canadienne, 1971, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Grand Palais Rmn (musée d'Orsay) / Martine Beck-Coppola

Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait de l'artiste, vers 1892, huile sur toile, 40,5 x 32,5 cm, achat avec les fonds d'une donation anonyme canadienne, 1971, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Grand Palais Rmn (musée d'Orsay) / Martine Beck-Coppola
  • Biographie
  • Dates clés
  • Bibliographie

Long excluded from histories of the movement, Caillebotte is now recognised as one of Impressionism’s most important figures. He played an important role not only as a painter, but also as a driving force behind the group and its exhibitions, and as a collector and patron of his comrades.

Gustave Caillebotte was an artist whose deeply personal body of paintings expanded the possibilities for Impressionism. Caillebotte depicted Paris from his particular vantage point as a wealthy young man, carefully weighing up the pleasures and pressures of modern life as he saw and lived it. He combined fascinations with modern spaces, complex geometries, ambiguous narratives, inscrutable psyches, social identities, technical know-how, and physical effort into a singular vision which thrust him to the forefront of Impressionism in the 1870s. The monumental scale and visual detail of his early works reflected his Academic training under Léon Bonnat and the contemporary currency of Naturalism. By the 1880s, Caillebotte was adapting to painting en plein air and experimenting with a more decorative register of Impressionism, influenced by his friend Claude Monet and informed by his outdoor passions for yachting and gardening. Caillebotte left Paris for the village of Le Petit-Gennevilliers in 1887, and died there of a stroke in 1894, aged just forty-five. Long excluded from histories of the movement, Caillebotte is now recognised as one of Impressionism’s most important figures.

Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait de l'artiste, vers 1892, huile sur toile, 40,5 x 32,5 cm, achat avec les fonds d'une donation anonyme canadienne, 1971, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Grand Palais Rmn (musée d'Orsay) / Martine Beck-Coppola

Gustave Caillebotte: Impressionist Polymath

The key to understanding the nature of Caillebotte’s art, as well as his significance for Impressionism, is to understand that he was not only an artist. First, Caillebotte was a pivotal leader for the Impressionist group, the Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc. After his debut at their second exhibition in 1876, Caillebotte effectively took charge. The Impressionist exhibitions in 1877 and 1882 were created almost entirely by Caillebotte alone: he did everything from renting the spaces to curating the displays and physically hanging the paintings. Through strategic leadership, emollient diplomacy, and sheer physical effort, Caillebotte shaped the public face of Impressionism in its formative years.

Second, Caillebotte was an important early collector of Impressionist paintings. Caillebotte bought pictures to subsidise his struggling comrades, to inspire and nourish his own artistic development, and to burnish Impressionism’s legacy. Caillebotte was a passionate partisan of the Impressionist cause, which he saw as a fight for artistic autonomy, and from the beginning he planned to bequeath his collection to the French state. Not without some controversy and compromise, his wishes came to pass, and today his collection forms a substantial part of the much-loved and well-visited Impressionist holdings at the Musée d’Orsay.

Third, painting was just one of Caillebotte’s pursuits: he also created one of the most important stamp collections of the age, cultivated rare and exotic orchids, and designed and raced yachts to triumph at numerous regattas. By December 1878, Caillebotte had inherited enough money to never need labour a day in his life, and he put his wealth to work in all these endeavours, as he did for Impressionism. But it was his investments of effort and ingenuity that astonished contemporaries. At the 1882 Impressionist exhibition, one art critic was bemused to find Caillebotte hanging pictures, « travaillant comme un commissionnaire [1] ». The yachting world knew Caillebotte as a « travailleur infatigable par tempérament, ayant horreur des oisifs [2] », and his fellow stamp collectors saw « une grande fortune, un goût sûr et l’amour du travail [3] » as the sources of Caillebotte’s success.

Gustave Caillebotte, Partie de bateau, vers 1877-1878, huile sur toile, 89,5 x 116,7 cm, achat râce au mécénat exclusif de LVMH, Grand Mécène de l’établissement, 2022, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Musée d'Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crépy

Caillebotte’s Paris

Caillebotte admired talent and effort in others and strove to be skilled and hardworking himself. He revelled in the manual and mental work of painting, of constructing complex perspectives and handling unctuous paint. He painted bodies hard at work or else exerting themselves for pleasure; when he painted people with nothing to do, they were tightly-wound or suspiciously sinuous.

Caillebotte was deeply curious about others but always kept his distance: his paintings record, but never reveal, inner thoughts and private conservations. He was mainly interested in painting other men [4] : their work a cipher for his own, their inner world an echo of his. Caillebotte painted not only because he enjoyed it, but because he had to; he had to strive, to succeed, to be something more than a rentier, more than just his father’s son.

Caillebotte’s wealth was a boon and a burden. It freed him from any obligations except those he placed upon himself: unlike, say, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, he never had to adjust his art to market tastes. Without the need to work, he had the time and energy to choose his own path and to live his passions fully [5]. Yet, he felt acutely the social expectations of his position [6]. He never married the woman he loved, Anne-Marie Hagen (also known as Charlotte Berthier), likely because she was too low-born, and waited until his father had died to join the Impressionists, perhaps to spare him a shock [7]. And while he was insured against the material consequences of artistic failure, Caillebotte was deeply wounded when his paintings were unappreciated, whether by the Salon jury or by critics.

Gustave Caillebotte, Peintres en bâtiments, 1877, huile sur toile, 89,3 x 116 cm, 2023, en dépôt d'une collection particulière, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Musée d'Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crépy

Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait de Richard Gallo, 1881, huile sur toile, 97,2 x 116,5 cm, William Rockhill Nelson Trsut, Kansas-City, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Source : The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. https://nelson-atkins.org

Gustave Caillebotte, Jeune homme jouant du piano, 1876, huile sur toile, dimensions inconnues, Tokyo, Artizon Museum. Source : Artizon Museum Ishibashi Foundation. www.artizon.museum/en/collection. DR.

Caillebotte also felt the wider social tensions of his age. Parisians in the 1870s remembered well the trauma of the Commune [8], when a revolutionary workers’ government had briefly ruled before being brutally repressed by the national government. The political atmosphere around Caillebotte was characterised by a widespread desire to heal social divisions, underwritten by fear of another cataclysm. Caillebotte was no idealogue, but he aligned with the aspirations of moderate Republicans to reforge social cohesion without upending class hierarchy.

Caillebotte’s father Martial made his money supplying beds to the French army, and Gustave grew up around the business and its workshop in the Faubourg Saint-Denis, witnessing the hard work of labourers and businessmen, and enjoying the financial and social capital they produced. Caillebotte inherited equities, bonds, and real estate totalling a million francs [9] ; the experience of his childhood, the example of his father, and an increasing stigmatisation of unproductive rentiers by Republican politicians impressed Caillebotte with a sense of obligation to put his wealth to work. In 1879, Caillebotte thanked the critic Jules Poignard for an article in which he described Caillebotte as an « enfant gâté » who had made himself exceptional through « volonté servie par la fortune […] la richesse laborieuse [10] ».

“ He entered the fray as a spoilt child, assured against misery and strong in both fortune and will. He had that rare courage of industrious wealth. And I know only a few who have forgotten, as much as he did, that they were rentiers, only to remember that they had to be famous. ”

Montjoyeux, Le Gaulois, 18 april 1879 [10]

Gustave Caillebotte, Raboteurs de parquet, 1875, huile sur toile, 102 x 147 cm, Don, 1894, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay)/Franck Raux

Caillebotte’s Impressionism

Gustave Caillebotte made his artistic debut in 1876, exhibiting a suite of interior scenes depicting life in his family’s luxurious mansion. Raboteurs de parquet (1875, Orsay), Caillebotte’s first major work, depicts three half-nude men hard at work refinishing the floor of a room that would become his studio. Originally intended for the Salon, it was a bold statement of artistic intent and identity, and it established the pictorial problems that would preoccupy Caillebotte for years to come: of embodiment and exertion, of modern spaces, and of social difference.

Indeed, Caillebotte’s fascination with bodies would recur in later paintings, including Partie de bateau (c. 1877-1878, Orsay), Nu au divan (1881, Mia), and Homme au bain (1884, Boston).

Raboteurs de parquet stages an encounter between wealth and work, between gilded moulding and tired muscles, with Caillebotte caught in the middle. Other paintings shown in 1876 and set in the family home, like Jeune homme au piano (1876, Artizon), Jeune homme à sa fenetre (1876, Getty), and Déjeuner (1876, priv. coll.) showed distorted domestic spaces under a blanket of silence, tension, and interiority. These themes would become the hallmarks of Caillebotte’s interiors [11].

Intérieur, femme à la fenêtre (1876, priv. coll.) depicted a bourgeois couple with nothing to say to one another. For Paul Mantz, « le divorce est inévitable [12] », while for Joris-Karl Huysmans, « ce couple […] accepte, sans révolte, avec une douceur résignée la situation qu’a faite la permanence du contact, l’habitude [13] ». That Caillebotte seems to suggest both possibilities simultaneously is entirely typical of his nuanced vision of bourgeois life in modern Paris. Such paintings reveal the experience of an artist both at home in this world and wanting to do his class differently. His choice to become an artist, rather than a lawyer or a rentier, was also a choice to unfix and reconfigure his social position.

 

Gustave Caillebotte, Nu au divan, vers 1880, huile sur toile, 130 x 200 cm, The John R. Van Derlip Found, Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Art. Source : Minneapolis, MIA, Public Domain.

Gustave Caillebotte, Homme au bain, 1884, huile sur toile, 144,8 x 114,3 cm, Museum purchase with funds by exchange from an Anonymous gift, 2011, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. Source : Boston, MFA, fait use permitted. www.mfa.org

Gustave Caillebotte, Intérieur, femme à la fenêtre, 1876, huile sur toile, 116 x 89 cm, Collection particulière. Source : Wikimedia, public domain / DR.

Gustave Caillebotte, Jeune homme à sa fenêtre, 1876, huile sur toile, 116 x 81 cm, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum. Source : Public domain, The Getty, www.getty.edu.

Gustave Caillebotte, Rue de Paris, temps de pluie, 1877, huile sur toile, 212,2 x 276,2 cm, Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Collection, Chicago, Art Institute. Source : Art Institute Chicago, public domain. www.artic.edu

For the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877, Caillebotte took to the streets. Le Pont de l’Europe (1876, Geneva) and Rue de Paris; temps de pluie (1877, Chicago) depict the gleaming infrastructure of new Paris, from imposing steel trellises to standardised apartment blocks. But, as with his interiors, the spaces are distorted to emphasise plunging depth. Each scene is populated with modern Parisians, but Caillebotte deliberately avoids narrative; the figures’ dress and manner reveal their gender and class, but little else. Rebuffed by these passing strangers, we are an observer, not a participant, in hinted stories and unheard conversations. To Caillebotte’s contemporaries, these scenes made the familiar just slightly stranger.

A similar ambivalence is at play in his still lives [14]. Some, like Gâteaux (c. 1881-2, priv. coll.), Fruit Displayed on a Stand (c. 1881-2, Boston) and Langouste à la Parisienne (c. 1881, priv. coll.), delight in texture and flavour. But our watering mouths turn bitter when Caillebotte serves up Calf’s Head and Ox Tongue (c. 1882, Chicago), where impasto brushwork congeals into globs of dried blood. A truly disgusting work, and highly successful for that, it captures a sense of the grime behind the glitz of the Belle Époque.

The monumental scale, spatial and psychological complexity, and meticulous visual detail of Caillebotte’s early works required considered preparation, extensive study, and countless hours at the easel. It was not that Caillebotte rejected Impressionist bravura in favour of Academic finish, but rather that he was fixed on painting as a laborious process, and felt a compulsion to make obvious his enormous efforts borne of anxiety about his social position as a rentier who worked « comme un commissionnaire [15] ».

Gustave Caillebotte, Tête de veau et langue de bœuf, vers 1882, huile sur toile, 73 x 54 cm, Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment, Chicago, Art Institute. Source : Art Institute Chicago, public domain. www.artic.edu

Gustave Caillebotte, Fruits sur un étal, 1882-1882, huile sur toile, 76,5 x 100,6 cm, Fanny P. Mason Fund in memory of Alice Thevin, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. Source : Boston, MFA, fait use permitted. www.mfa.org

Gustave Caillebotte, Les Périssoires, 1878, huile sur toile, 157 x 113 cm, Rennes, musée des Beaux-Arts. Source : MBA, Rennes, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Louis Deschamps.

An evolving style

Caillebotte was equally anxious to make sense of his position within Impressionism. The realist tenor of his contributions in 1876 and 1877 aligned with Edmond Duranty’s idea of the new painting, but led critics to question whether Caillebotte really belonged with Impressionists. And Caillebotte very much wanted to belong. For the 1879 exhibition, he debuted six pastels and eight oils, painted en plein air, depicting men rowing, bathing, and fishing, among them a triptych of panneau décoratif: Pêche à la ligne (1878, priv. coll.), Baigneurs, bords de l’Yerres (1878, priv. coll.), and Périssoires (1878, Rennes).

By responding to works he had purchased, Caillebotte triangulated his Impressionism against those of his comrades [16]. His use of pastel was perhaps inspired by Degas, and his plein air paintings by Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir. In these latter, his broken facture captures the scintillation of light reflecting on water; bright, luminous colours recreate natural light; and frozen figures suggest the spontaneity of painting on the spot [17]. Set on the Yerres river which ran through the family’s summer estate, the scenes authentically capture the distractions of bourgeois escaping the city; yet, in style, critics felt they were entirely inauthentic to Caillebotte, and were scathing in their condemnation. Caillebotte’s desire to fit in, and his experience of such failures, was at stake in his decisions, artistic and otherwise.

Gustave Caillebotte, Le Nageur, 1877, pastel sur papier, 69 x 88,5 cm, achat, 1946, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt.

Gustave Caillebotte, Canotier ramenant sa périssoire, 1878, huile sur toile, 73,6 x 92,7 cm, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Source : Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, CC-BY-NC.

Gustave Caillebotte, Régates à Argenteuil ou Une course de bateaux, 1893, huile sur toile, 89 x 65 cm, collection particulière. Source : Wikimedia, public domain / DR.

Caillebotte skipped the exhibition in 1881 following disagreement with Degas, but returned in 1882 with 18 works and a signal new direction in his art. La Partie de bésigue (1881, Abu Dhabi) pictures Caillebotte’s sailing friends from the Cercle de la voile de Paris, playing cards in the apartment he shared with Martial on the Boulevard Haussmann. Sailing was a fashionable pastime among the Parisian bourgeoisie, for whom it gave the double thrill of strapping masculinity and social exclusion. Caillebotte was an avid sailor, who enjoyed both the cut-and-thrust of regattas (nobody in France won more than him in 1888-9) and the technical engineering of the vessels (he designed 25) [18].

In 1887, Caillebotte moved permanently to Le Petit Gennevilliers, a village on the Seine opposite Argenteuil. Between the friendships of the Cercle, the fulfilment of yachting success, and the fraternity of his yacht chantier, Caillebotte seems to have found his place. In Régates à Argenteuil (1893, priv. coll.), we see Caillebotte at a peak of confidence, deftly manoeuvring the rudder of his favourite yacht, Roastbeef, which he had designed and raced to glittering success. This is a far cry from the tentative and precarious painter in Autoportrait au chevalet (1880, priv. coll.). The light-hearted names of his boats – Cul-blanc, Mignon, Lapin – suggests a man having fun, but Caillebotte’s experimental designs and hands-on involvement with their constructions sets him apart from the dilletante.

In Le Petit Gennevilliers, Caillebotte also spent time gardening [19], a late flowering of his childhood summers in Yerres [20]. This was another bourgeois craze, but the garden he set out was not the decorative ensemble we would expect from the hobbyist. In Dahlias, Garden at Petit Gennevilliers (1893, Washington), we see flowers and foliage, a female figure (likely Anne-Marie Hagen) and dog walking the sun-dappled path, the artist’s countryfied house, and the sweeping, industrial form of Caillebotte’s vast orchid greenhouse. Caillebotte employed four gardeners but relished getting his own hands dirty. The flowers were intended to be beautiful – the dining room was decorated with trompe l’oeil panels of the greenhouse interior (1893, coll. part.) and Caillebotte pioneered flattened, decorative panels which inspired Monet (1893, Marmottan) – but the garden was laid out as a space for production.

Caillebotte never gave up his artistic ambitions. In Petit Gennevilliers as in Paris, painting was one of many passions, one of many outlets for his richesse laborieuse. But art was a critical, driving force throughout his life, because it was through the effort of making art that Caillebotte made himself.

Gustave Caillebotte, Dahlias, Jardin au Petit Gennevilliers, 1893, huile sur toile, 157 x 114 cm, Gift of the Scharffenberger Family, Washington, National Gallery of Art. Source : National Gallery of Art, public domain.

Gustave Caillebotte, Chrysanthèmes blancs et jaunes. Jardin du Petit Gennevilliers, 1893, huile sur toile, 73 × 62 cm, Legs Michel Monet, 1966. Inv. 5061, Paris, musée Marmottan Monet. Source : © musée Marmottan Monet.

Claude Monet, La Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, huile sur toile, 75 x 105 cm, Legs Gustave Caillebotte, 1896, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Musée d'Orsay, dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Patrice Schmidt

Leading the group

Caillebotte supported Impressionism with considerable sums of money and invaluable strategic leadership [21]. Starting in 1876, Caillebotte advanced and gifted cash to Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir; in 1879, he gave Monet alone 6,000 francs. Caillebotte also paid the rent on apartments for Monet, on the rue Moncey while he was painting the Gare Saint-Lazare in 1877, and on the rue Vintimille between 1878 and 1881 (which they both initially shared). Caillebotte saw Impressionism as a collective project, and these investments were intended to cement social bonds and secure his place within the group. By enabling key Impressionists to live and paint, Caillebotte was also advancing the cause of their shared endeavour. At specific moments, his cash gifts to Monet were also intended as inducements to participate in the group’s exhibitions.

Caillebotte believed that group exhibitions were the best means of advancing Impressionism, and his financial muscle allowed him to take change. The show in 1877 was largely his creation [22]. Caillebotte found and paid for the venue, an apartment at 6 rue le Peletier; paid for advertisements in the press; helped Renoir hang all 241 works displayed; and loaned works from his own collection. Caillebotte invested effort and expertise as well as money: he selected the artists involved and guided their choice of works; negotiated important loans from private collectors; chaired the installation committee which curated the hang; designed the catalogue; and selected wall hangings so the paintings were shown to best effect. Since April 1876, Caillebotte had been pushing to more coherently define and consolidate the meaning and membership of « impressionnisme », and it was thanks to his efforts that the 1877 show was the first to use the name « impressionniste ». Under that rubric, Caillebotte curated the most coherent and persuasive manifesto of the movement yet, arguably ever, seen.

Auguste Renoir, Étude, dit aussi Torse, effet de soleil, vers 1876, huile sur toile, 81 x 65 cm, Legs Gustave Caillebotte, 896, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt.

Caillebotte’s Legacy

Caillebotte began purchasing Impressionist pictures at the Hôtel Drouot sale on 24 March 1875 and, by the time of his death in 1894, his collection comprised about seventy-two works, including such masterpieces as Edouard Manet’s Le balcon (1868-1869, Orsay); Renoir’s Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876, Orsay); Monet’s Régates à Argenteuil (1872, Orsay) and La Gare Saint-Lazare, (1877, Orsay); Pissarro’s Les toits rouges, coin de village, effet d’hiver (1877, Orsay); and Cezanne’s Baigneurs au repos (1876-1877, Barnes) [23].

As early as November 1876, Caillebotte had envisioned a bequest to the French state; his precocious stipulation that they must hang together in the Luxembourg then the Louvre reflects his soaring ambition. But other personal motivations were also at stake. By collecting with an eye on the future, Caillebotte displaced his own fears of death and the trauma of his younger brother René’s sudden death. Purchases of artworks, sometimes at deliberately elevated prices [24], were another means of subsidising his struggling friends, and having a private collection gave Caillebotte more leverage, when organising Impressionist exhibitions, to cajole hesitant or truculent comrades.

But Caillebotte also well understood the importance of institutional recognition and public visibility for cementing artistic legacies. In the event, his bequest was sorely needed, because in 1894 the Luxembourg owned just three Impressionist works. The injection of such a quantity of modern pictures would be utterly transformational, and predictably controversial.

Caillebotte’s collection did, of course, reflect his own taste – Neo-Impressionism was banished – and the artworks he owned were an important resource for his developing style and artistic identity. Objects from Caillebotte’s collection appear in several of his interiors, suggesting not only that he lived among them, but that he deliberately triangulated his own art against them. In Autoportrait au chevalet (1880, priv. coll.), Caillebotte turns his own canvas away, deflecting our attention onto Renoir’s Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876, Orsay).

His acquisition of pastels by Degas, including Femmes à la terrasse d’un café le soir (1877, Orsay), spurred Caillebotte to experiment with the medium, as in Le Nageur (1877, Orsay) [25]. Inspired perhaps by Degas and Camille Pissarro’s love of printmaking, Caillebotte put his hand to drypoint, making sketchy reinterpretations of his paintings, including Oarsmen (1877, Bremen) [26].

 

Gustave Caillebotte, Autoportrait au chevalet, 1879, huile sur toile, 90 x 115 cm, Collection particulière. Source : Wikimedia, public domain / DR.

Gustave Caillebotte, Canotiers, 1877, eau-forte et pointe sèche, 16 x 23,7 cm (planche), 25,6 x 34,3 cm (feuille), Brême, Kunsthalle. Source : Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen, Foto: Die Kulturgutscanner, Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Gustave Caillebotte, Vue de toits (Effet de neige), 1878, huile sur toile, 64,5 x 81,0 cm, Don Martial Caillebotte, 1894, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Franck Raux.

The media furore provoked by the Caillebotte bequest is the stuff of legend. The classic narrative of the “Caillebotte affair” promulgated by Octave Mirbeau and Arsène Alexandre – that Caillebotte’s generosity was refused by philistine bureaucrats – has been nuanced in more recent accounts; the difficulties seemed mainly about lack of space [27]. The Caillebotte bequest was entirely unprecedented in France: beyond the novelty of Impressionism, a private donation of a whole collection of modern art required flexibility from bureaucrats. The bequest was accepted, in part, in 1895: Léonce Bénédite, director of the Luxembourg, selected forty works from the sixty on offer. Caillebotte excluded his own paintings from the bequest, but Martial gifted Raboteurs de Parquet (1875, Orsay) and Vue de toits (Effet de neige) (1878-9, Orsay) separately.

On 9 February 1897, the Caillebotte collection was displayed in a new, specially constructed wing. It offered a panorama of Impressionism and aroused the same passionate and vitriolic reactions as the group’s first show twenty-three years earlier. Caillebotte had created the world’s most complete museum collection of Impressionism, just in time for the first wave of monographs which secured Impressionism’s place in the French canon [28]. Caillebotte had nurtured Impressionism throughout his life and now, in death, secured its legacy.

Gustave Caillebotte, Au café, 1880, huile sur toile, 153 x 114 cm, Rouen, musée des Beaux-Arts. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Martine Beck-Coppola.

[1] Fichtre [pseud. Gaston Vassy], « L’Actualité: L’Exposition des peintres indépendants », Le Réveil, 2 mars 1882, cité dans Ruth Berson, The New Painting: Impressionism 1874-1886, Documentation, t. 1 Reviews, San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1996, p. 387.
[2] B. Montponton, « Yachting. Gustave Caillebotte », Les Sports français : organe des sociétés d’éducation physique, 23 février 1894, p. 88 cité dans Scott Allan, Gloria Groom, et Paul Perrin (éd.), Caillebotte : Peindre Les Hommes (catalogue d’exposition : Musée d’Orsay, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Art Institute of Chicago 2024/2025), Paris, Musée d’Orsay/Hazan, 2024, p. 17-18.
[3] « Mort De M. Georges Caillebotte», Le Collectionneur de timbres-poste, février 1894, p. 31.
[4] Allan, Groom, et Perrin (éd.), Caillebotte, 2024; Tamar Garb, « Gustave Caillebotte’s Male Figures : Masculinity, Muscularity and Modernity » dans Terry Smith (éd.), In Visible Touch : Modernism and Masculinity, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997, p. 53-74.
[5] Stéphane Guégan, Caillebotte. Peintre des extrêmes, Paris, Hazan, 2021; Michael Marrinan, Gustave Caillebotte: Painting the Paris of Naturalism, 1872-1887, Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 2016.
[6] Norma Broude (éd.), Gustave Caillebotte and the Fashioning of Identity in Impressionist Paris, Rutgers University Press, 2002.
[7]  Marrinan, p. 22-25.
[8] Albert Boime, Art and the French Commune: Imagining Paris after War and Revolution, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1995.
[9] Marrinan, p. 17-23, 65-67.
[10] Montjoyeux [pseud. Jules Poignard], « Chroniques parisiennes: Les Indépendants », Le Gaulois, 18 avril 1879, cité dans Berson 1996, 234.
[11] Elizabeth Benjamin, The Unhomely Home: Caillebotte’s Interior Paris, PhD, Northwestern University, 2016.
[12]  Paul Mantz, « Exposition des œuvres des artistes indépendants », Le Temps, 14 avril 1880 cité dans Berson, p. 296-299.
[13] Joris-Karl Huysmans, « L’Exposition des indépendants en 1880 », L’Art moderne, Paris, G. Charpentier, 1883, p. 85-123 cité dans Berson, p. 285-292.
[14] Allison Deutsch, Consuming Painting: Food and the Feminine in Impressionist Paris, University Park PA, Penn State University Press, 2021, p. 66-75, 95-111.
[15] Vassy dans Berson, p. 387.
[16] Marrinan, p. 137-141; Galina Olmsted, Making and Exhibiting Modernism: Gustave Caillebotte in Paris, New York, and Brussels, thèse de doctorat sous la direction de Margaret Werth, University of Delaware, 2019, p. 145-147.
[17] Marnin Young, Realism in the Age of Impressionism: Painting and the Politics of Time, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2015, p. 53-89.
[18] Daniel Charles, Le mystère Caillebotte: l’œuvre architecturale de Gustave Caillebotte, peintre impressionniste, jardinier, philatéliste et régatier, Grenoble, Glénat, 1994; Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark, Dorothee Hansen, et Gry Hedin, (éd.), Gustave Caillebotte (catalogue d’exposition : Kunsthalle Bremen, Ordrupgaard et Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2008/2009), Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2008.
[19] Marina Ferretti Bocquillon (éd.), Caillebotte, peintre et jardinier (catalogue d’exposition : Musée des impressionnismes Giverrny et Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2016), Hazan, 2016.
[20] Pierre Wittmer, Caillebotte au jardin: La période d’Yerres, 1860-1879, Saint-Remy-en-L’Eau, Editions d’Art Monelle Hayot, 1990.
[21] Olmsted.
[22] Richard R. Brettell, « The ‘First’ Exhibition of Impressionist Painting » dans Moffett (éd.), The New Painting, p. 189-202.
[23] Anne Distel, Les Collectionneurs des impressionnistes : amateurs et marchands, Paris, La Bibliothèque des arts, 1989.
[24] Varnedoe, p. 4.
[25] Marrinan, p. 160-164.
[26] Dorothee Hansen, « Newly discovered prints by Gustave Caillebotte », The Burlington Magazine, 2009, 151-1272, p. 160-162.
[27] Pierre Vaisse, Deux façons d’écrire l’histoire : le legs Caillebotte, Paris, INHA/Ophrys, 2014; Fanny Matz, « Le legs Caillebotte : une « affaire délicate », dans Paul Perrin (éd), Caillebotte et les impressionnistes. Histoire d’une collection, Paris, Musée d’Orsay/Hazan, 2024, p. 17-28.
[28] Camille Mauclair, L’impressionnisme, Paris, Librairie de l’Art Ancien et Moderne, 1904; Julius Meier-Graefe, Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst, Stuttgart, Hoffmann, 1904; Theodore Duret, Histoire des peintres impressionnistes, Paris, H. Floury, 1906.

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Samuel Raybone, « Gustave Caillebotte ENG », Impressionnisme.s [en ligne], mis en ligne le 28 Jan 2024 , consulté le 10 Feb 2025. URL: https://impressionnismes.fr/personalite/gustave-caillebotte-eng/

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    Caillebotte peindre les hommes (cat.expo. musée d’Orsay, 8 octobre 2024 – 19 janvier 2025)

    Vanves, Paris, Hazan, 2024

  • Stéphane Guégan

    Caillebotte : peintre des extrêmes

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    Gustave Caillebotte : the painter’s eye (cat.expo. Washington, the National Gallery of Art, Juin – octobre 2015 ; Fort Worth, the Kimbell Art Museum, novembre 2015 – février 2016)

    Washington, DC : National Gallery of Art ; Chicago, IL : Hardcover copublished by the University of Chicago Press, 2015

  • Anne Distel

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    Los Angeles : Getty Research Institute, 2016.

  • Pierre Vaisse

    Deux façons d’écrire l’histoire : le legs Caillebotte.

    Paris : Institut national d'histoire de l'art : Éditions Ophrys, 2014.

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    Gustave Caillebotte

    New Haven, Yale University Press, 1987.

Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait de l'artiste, vers 1892, huile sur toile, 40,5 x 32,5 cm, achat avec les fonds d'une donation anonyme canadienne, 1971, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Grand Palais Rmn (musée d'Orsay) / Martine Beck-Coppola
Gustave Caillebotte, Partie de bateau, vers 1877-1878, huile sur toile, 89,5 x 116,7 cm, achat râce au mécénat exclusif de LVMH, Grand Mécène de l’établissement, 2022, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Musée d'Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crépy
Gustave Caillebotte, Peintres en bâtiments, 1877, huile sur toile, 89,3 x 116 cm, 2023, en dépôt d'une collection particulière, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Musée d'Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Sophie Crépy
Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait de Richard Gallo, 1881, huile sur toile, 97,2 x 116,5 cm, William Rockhill Nelson Trsut, Kansas-City, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Source : The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. https://nelson-atkins.org
Gustave Caillebotte, Jeune homme jouant du piano, 1876, huile sur toile, dimensions inconnues, Tokyo, Artizon Museum. Source : Artizon Museum Ishibashi Foundation. www.artizon.museum/en/collection. DR.
Gustave Caillebotte, Raboteurs de parquet, 1875, huile sur toile, 102 x 147 cm, Don, 1894, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay)/Franck Raux
Gustave Caillebotte, Nu au divan, vers 1880, huile sur toile, 130 x 200 cm, The John R. Van Derlip Found, Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Art. Source : Minneapolis, MIA, Public Domain.
Gustave Caillebotte, Homme au bain, 1884, huile sur toile, 144,8 x 114,3 cm, Museum purchase with funds by exchange from an Anonymous gift, 2011, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. Source : Boston, MFA, fait use permitted. www.mfa.org
Gustave Caillebotte, Intérieur, femme à la fenêtre, 1876, huile sur toile, 116 x 89 cm, Collection particulière. Source : Wikimedia, public domain / DR.
Gustave Caillebotte, Jeune homme à sa fenêtre, 1876, huile sur toile, 116 x 81 cm, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum. Source : Public domain, The Getty, www.getty.edu.
Gustave Caillebotte, Rue de Paris, temps de pluie, 1877, huile sur toile, 212,2 x 276,2 cm, Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Collection, Chicago, Art Institute. Source : Art Institute Chicago, public domain. www.artic.edu
Gustave Caillebotte, Tête de veau et langue de bœuf, vers 1882, huile sur toile, 73 x 54 cm, Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment, Chicago, Art Institute. Source : Art Institute Chicago, public domain. www.artic.edu
Gustave Caillebotte, Fruits sur un étal, 1882-1882, huile sur toile, 76,5 x 100,6 cm, Fanny P. Mason Fund in memory of Alice Thevin, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts. Source : Boston, MFA, fait use permitted. www.mfa.org
Gustave Caillebotte, Les Périssoires, 1878, huile sur toile, 157 x 113 cm, Rennes, musée des Beaux-Arts. Source : MBA, Rennes, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Louis Deschamps.
Gustave Caillebotte, Le Nageur, 1877, pastel sur papier, 69 x 88,5 cm, achat, 1946, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Patrice Schmidt.
Gustave Caillebotte, Canotier ramenant sa périssoire, 1878, huile sur toile, 73,6 x 92,7 cm, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Source : Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, CC-BY-NC.
Gustave Caillebotte, Régates à Argenteuil ou Une course de bateaux, 1893, huile sur toile, 89 x 65 cm, collection particulière. Source : Wikimedia, public domain / DR.
Gustave Caillebotte, Dahlias, Jardin au Petit Gennevilliers, 1893, huile sur toile, 157 x 114 cm, Gift of the Scharffenberger Family, Washington, National Gallery of Art. Source : National Gallery of Art, public domain.
Gustave Caillebotte, Chrysanthèmes blancs et jaunes. Jardin du Petit Gennevilliers, 1893, huile sur toile, 73 × 62 cm, Legs Michel Monet, 1966. Inv. 5061, Paris, musée Marmottan Monet. Source : © musée Marmottan Monet.
Claude Monet, La Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877, huile sur toile, 75 x 105 cm, Legs Gustave Caillebotte, 1896, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Musée d'Orsay, dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Patrice Schmidt
Auguste Renoir, Étude, dit aussi Torse, effet de soleil, vers 1876, huile sur toile, 81 x 65 cm, Legs Gustave Caillebotte, 896, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt.
Gustave Caillebotte, Autoportrait au chevalet, 1879, huile sur toile, 90 x 115 cm, Collection particulière. Source : Wikimedia, public domain / DR.
Gustave Caillebotte, Canotiers, 1877, eau-forte et pointe sèche, 16 x 23,7 cm (planche), 25,6 x 34,3 cm (feuille), Brême, Kunsthalle. Source : Kunsthalle Bremen - Der Kunstverein in Bremen, Foto: Die Kulturgutscanner, Public Domain Mark 1.0.
Gustave Caillebotte, Vue de toits (Effet de neige), 1878, huile sur toile, 64,5 x 81,0 cm, Don Martial Caillebotte, 1894, Paris, musée d'Orsay. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Franck Raux.
Gustave Caillebotte, Au café, 1880, huile sur toile, 153 x 114 cm, Rouen, musée des Beaux-Arts. Source : RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Martine Beck-Coppola.