Caillebotte, Gustave
Gustave Caillebotte, b. Aug. 19, 1848, d. Feb. 21, 1894, was a French painter and a generous patron of the impressionists, whose own works, until recently, were neglected.
He was an engineer by profession, but also attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He met Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Pierre Auguste Renoir in 1874 and helped organize the first impressionist exhibition in Paris that same year. He participated in later shows and painted some 500 works in a more realistic style than that of his friends. Caillebotte's most intriguing paintings are those of the broad, new Parisian boulevards. The boulevards were painted from high vantage points and were populated with elegantly clad figures strolling with the expressionless intensity of somnambulists, as in Boulevard Vu d'en Haut (1880; private collection, Paris). Caillebotte's superb collection of impressionist paintings was left to the French government on his death. With considerable reluctance the government accepted part of the collection.
Rue de Paris, temps de pluie;
Intersection de la Rue de Turin et de la Rue de Moscou
1877 (100 Kb); Paris: A Rainy Day
depicts an area of the Batignolles quarter.
Oil on canvas, 212.2 x 276.2 cm (83 1/2 x 108 3/4");
The Art Institute of Chicago;
part of the Charles H and Mary F.s. Worcester Fund
Scolls
Esquisse pour le pont de l'Europe
Rooftops under snow
1878, Musée d'Orsay
Thatched Cottage at Trouville
1882 (90 Kb); Oil on canvas; Art Institute of Chicago
Photographs by Mark Harden.