The quintessential painter of French Naturalism
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) may not be a household name like Monet, Renoir, or Degas, but he was nonetheless one of the most important artists of the French Impressionist school. Caillebotte had a leading hand in organizing the group’s exhibitions, and, having been born into a wealthy family, he provided financial assistance to his fellow artists by loaning them money, buying their paintings, or, as in the case of Monet, paying his rent. Beyond his role as the Impressionists’ greatest booster, Caillebotte was also an excellent painter in his own right, and one who has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in recent years. Stylistically, Caillebotte did not always toe the line of the movement he championed. Unlike Renoir and Degas, who specialized in scenes of refined leisure and feminine beauty, Caillebotte often chose unconventional subjects and uncomfortable compositions to not only illustrate but also critique modern Parisian life.The book Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist was published in 1995 to accompany an exhibition of the same name jointly organized by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and the Art Institute of Chicago. That exhibition featured 117 Caillebotte paintings, all of which are reproduced in color and given individual critical consideration. The book also contains many black and white images of Caillebotte paintings not included in the exhibition, works by his contemporaries, and photographs of Caillebotte and his family. Everything this book does, it does thoroughly, perhaps too thoroughly for the casual reader, who can still enjoy the pictures nonetheless. The book is really intended to be an authoritative text aimed at art history scholars and museum curators. As such, it delves deeply into the chronology of when and where each painting of Caillebotte’s was created and exhibited, how his work was reviewed by critics during his lifetime, and which scholarly monographs and exhibition catalogues have referred to it since.
The reader of this book will not only become well-versed in Caillebotte’s work but will also learn a great deal about Caillebotte’s personal life. In addition to biographical content and photos, the book contains not one but two detailed chronologies, one being solely devoted to Caillebotte’s accomplishments in sport sailing and boat design, at which he was an expert hobbyist.
The book is divided into chapters by subject, according to the recurring motifs of Caillebotte’s career, such as boating, the streets of Paris, views from a window, interiors and portraits, still lifes (mostly of food), floral still lifes, and his later works painted in Normandy and Petit Gennevilliers, where he owned country houses. The authors point out that Caillebotte’s paintings of interior spaces, laborers at work, and food on display were quite unique to the Impressionist movement, as were his realistic depictions of unglamorous women. His style was a cross between the blatant brushstrokes of his colleagues and the more polished contours of academic painting. More than any other artist, Caillebotte’s paintings epitomize the style, vision, and philosophy of French literary Naturalism, the movement spawned by novelist Emile Zola that emphasized frank empirical realism over romantic pretensions and idealizations. Though Impressionism and Naturalism were concurrent rather than conjoined artistic movements, one can clearly see that Zola and Caillebotte are depicting urban and suburban France with the same protomodern approach.
I was fortunate to see a 2015 retrospective of Caillebotte’s paintings at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. That more recent exhibition has its own catalogue, entitled Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye. One can also view a 1994 catalogue raisonné of Caillebotte’s paintings online for free at the website of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute (but the text is in French).
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Paintings by Gustave Caillebotte, from the book:
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