Monday, 17 March 2025

Gustave Caillebotte - part 3

c1879-80 Self Portrait with an Easel
oil on canvas 90 x 115 cm
Private Collection

Gustave Caillebotte was an influential French painter best known for his involvement in the Impressionist movement, though he also notably subscribed to a Realist aesthetic. The more naturalistic hues, neutral tones, and attention to perspectival space in his works set him apart from other Impressionist painters. As an artist familiar with Japanese prints, Caillebotte often mimicked the style of ukiyo-e artists by utilizing a tilted perspective to depict the stretching boulevards and river scenes of Paris, such as in Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877). Born on August 19, 1848 in Paris, France to a wealthy family, the artist went on to study painting first with Léon Joseph Florentine Bonnat and then at the École des Beaux-Arts. After Caillebotte inherited money from his parents, he was able to not only fund his own career but support Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissaro and other artists by purchasing their work. Caillebotte’s work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, among others. He died on February 21, 1894 in Gennevilliers, France.

For earlier works, and for more biographical information, see parts 1 & 2 also. 

This is part 3 of a 5-part series on the works of Gustave Caillebotte: 

1880 Game of Bezique:

Eponymously depicts a bezique or bésigue contest; bezique being a 19th-century French melding and trick-taking card game for two players. It was displayed at the seventh Impressionist exhibition in 1882 and ran first in the catalogue. Caillebotte set this depiction of his friends in the luxurious apartment on Boulevard Haussmann on that he shared with his brother, the composer Martial Caillbotte, who is depicted in the picture smoking a pipe.

1880 Game of Bezique
oil on canvas 121 x 161 cm
Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE

1880 Cliffs in Normandy
oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm
Private Collection

1880 Boulevard Haussmann, effect of snow
oil on canvas 81 x 66 cm cm
Musée du château de Flers, Orne

1880 Boulevard from above
oil on canvas 65 x 54 cm
Private Collection

1880 Nude on a Couch
oil on canvas 129.5 x 194.6 cm
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN

1880 Marine, Regatta at Villers
oil on canvas 73.4 x 100 cm

1880 Interior, woman reading
oil on canvas 65 x 81 cm
Private Collection

1880 Interior
oil on canvas 116 x 89 cm

1880 Villas at Villers-sur-Mer
oil on canvas 64.8 x 81.3 cm

1880 View through a balcony
oil on canvas 65.6 x 54.9 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

1880 Man on a balcony, Boulevard Haussmann
oil on canvas 116.5 x 89.5 cm
Private Collection

1880 Portrait of a Man:

Among Gustave Caillebotte’s most celebrated works are his views of modern Paris seen from balconies and terraces, a theme that first appeared in his paintings of the mid-1870s. This painting depicts a middle-aged man sitting in room and looking toward a window with laced curtains. His fashionable suit and bow tie are markers of his social status as a flâneur of the urban bourgeoisie. Rather than wearing an expression of joy or delight, the sunlight raking across his face accentuates his heavily lidded eyes and sagging facial muscles, giving him a deeply contemplative expression as he gazes at the world from the comfort of his sumptuous apartment.

The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH

1880 Portrait of a Man
oil on canvas 81.3 x 65.6 cm
The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH

1880 View of the sea, Villerville
oil on canvas 54 x 65 cm

c1880-81 Cliff in Normandy
oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm
Private Collection

c1880 Boulevard Haussmann, snow
oil on canvas 65 x 82 cm
Private Collection

c1880 Boulevard des Italiens
oil on canvas 54 x 65 cm
Private Collection


c1880 Cliffs in Normandy
oil on canvas 73 x 60 cm

c1880 Cliff at Villers­ sur­ Mer
oil on canvas (dimensions not found)
Private Collection

c1880 Traffic island on Boulevard Haussmann
oil on canvas 81 x 101 cm
Private Collection

c1880 Three partridges on a table
oil on canvas (dimensions not found) 
Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI

c1880 Man on a balcony
oil on canvas 116 x 97 cm
Private Collection

1880-81 A Balcony in Paris: This painting is one of several by Caillebotte in which an urban street, viewed from a balcony, is seen through the spaces of an ornate iron grill in the foreground, differentiating the space of the street from the interior of his bourgeois home, 31 Boulevard Haussmann in Paris. The motif may have been inspired by similar juxtapositions seen in many Japanese ukiyo-e prints.

1880-81 A Balcony in Paris
oil on canvas 55.2 x 39 cm
Private Collection

c1880-82 Still life with crayfish
oil on canvas 58 x 72 cm
Private Collection

1880-82 Melon and bowl of figs
oil on canvas (dimensions not found)
Private Collection

1881 Still life: Oysters
oil on canvas 38 x 55 cm
Private Collection

1881 Rising Road
oil on canvas 100 x 125 cm
Private Collection

1881 Portrait of a Man
oil on canvas 45.7 x 38.1 cm

1881 Pastry  Cakes
oil on canvas 54 x 73 cm

1881 Young Peasant Having Her Coffee: 

In the 1880s, at a time when many of the original Impressionist painters had begun to pursue independent styles, Camille Pissarro actively worked to keep the group together. He persuaded Gustave Caillebotte and Claude Monet to take part in the seventh Impressionist exhibition, in 1882, and also displayed a number of his own paintings of peasant girls. Here the small brushstrokes, applied one next to the other and sometimes overlaid with dabs of thicker paint, result in an irregularly built-up surface, serving to integrate figure and setting and evoke the textures of the young woman’s wool clothing.

Art Institute of Chicago, IL


1881 Young peasant having her coffee
oil on canvas 65.3 x 54.8 cm charcoal, on tan paper
30.2 x 46.5 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1881 The piano lesson
oil on canvas 81 x 65 cm
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

c1881 A soldier
oil on canvas 196 x 75 cm
Private Collection

c1881-82 Hors d'Oeuvre
oil on canvas 25 x 55 cm
Private Collection

1881-82 Fruit Displayed on a Stand
oil on canvas 76.5 x 100.6 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

1882 Red mullet
oil on canvas 38 x 55.2 cm

1882 Hare
oil on canvas 89 x 35 cm
Petit Palais, Geneva


1882 Two Hanging Pheasants
oil on canvas 73 x 54 cm
Private Collection

1882 Tree in Flower
oil on canvas 82 x 66 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

1882 The Seine at Argenteuil
oil on canvas (details not found)

1882 The Beach at Trouville, View from the Corniceoil
oil on canvas 60.3 x 73 cm

1882 The Bank and the Argenteuil Bridge
oil on canvas 60 x 73 cm

Friday, 14 March 2025

Gustave Caillebotte - part 2

Gustave Caillebotte c1878

Gustave Caillebotte was an influential French painter best known for his involvement in the Impressionist movement, though he also notably subscribed to a Realist aesthetic. The more naturalistic hues, neutral tones, and attention to perspectival space in his works set him apart from other Impressionist painters. As an artist familiar with Japanese prints, Caillebotte often mimicked the style of ukiyo-e artists by utilizing a tilted perspective to depict the stretching boulevards and river scenes of Paris, such as in Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877). Born on August 19, 1848 in Paris, France to a wealthy family, the artist went on to study painting first with Léon Joseph Florentine Bonnat and then at the École des Beaux-Arts. After Caillebotte inherited money from his parents, he was able to not only fund his own career but support Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissaro and other artists by purchasing their work. Caillebotte’s work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, among others. He died on February 21, 1894 in Gennevilliers, France.

For earlier works, and for more biographical information, see part 1 also. 

This is part 2 of a 5-part series on the works od Gustave Caillebotte:

1877 Paris Street: Rainy Day 

This complex intersection, just minutes away from the Saint-Lazare train station, represents in microcosm the changing urban milieu of late nineteenth-century Paris. Gustave Caillebotte grew up near this district when it was a relatively unsettled hill with narrow, crooked streets. As part of a new city plan designed by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, these streets were relaid and their buildings razed during the artist’s lifetime. In this monumental urban view, which measures almost seven by ten feet and is considered the artist’s masterpiece.

1877 Paris Street; Rainy Day
oil on canvas 212.2 x 276.2 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1877 study for Paris Street: Rainy Day
graphite, with touches of erasing and touches of charcoal, on tan paper 30.2 x 46.5 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1877 Oarsmen rowing on the Yerres
oil on canvas 81 x 116 cm
Private Collection

1877 Monceau Park
oil on canvas 50 x 65 cm

1877 Mademoiselle Boissière Knitting
oil on canvas 65.1 x 80 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

1877 Portrait of Camille Daurelle
pastel on paper 40 x 32 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

1877 Portrait of Camille Daurelle in the park of Yerres
pastel on paper 73 x 60 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

1877 Portrait of A. Cassabois
oil on canvas 80 x 72.3 cm
Private Collection

1877 Portrait de Monsieur R. (Reyre)
oil on canvas 81 x 105 cm
Private Collection

1877 Portrait of Madame Martial Caillebote
(the artist's mother)
oil on canvas (size not given)
Private Collection

1877 Perissoires on the Yerres
oil on canvas 103 x 156 cm
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

1877 The Park at Yerres
oil on canvas 81 x 59 cm
Private Collection

1877 The nap
pastel 36 x 53 cm
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT

1877 The House Painters
oil on canvas 87 x 116 cm
Private Collection

1877 Skiffs
oil on canvas 88.9 x 116.2 cm
National Gallery of At, Washington, DC

1877 Rue Halévy, view from a Balcony
oil on canvas 54 x 65.5 cm
Museum Barberini, Potsdam

1877 The Yerres Valley
pastel on paper laid down on board 58.1 x 72.4 cm

1877 The wall of the Kitchen Garden, Yerress
oil on canvas 27 x 41 cm
Private Collection

1877 The wall of the garden
pastel on paper 44 x 49 cm
Private Collection

1877 The Swimmer
 pastel on paper 69 x 88.5 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris


c1877-78 Part of a Boat
oil on canvas 89.5 x 116.7 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

c1877 Skiff on the Yerres River
oil on canvas 65.7 x 81 cm
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA

c1877 Portrait of a Young Woman in an Interior
oil on canvas 81 x 65.1 cm
Private Collection

c1877 Landscape near Yerres
oil on canvas 48 x 65 cm
Private Collection

1878 Bathers on the banks of the Yerres
oil on canvas 156.9 x 116.9 cm
Private Collection

1878 A Man docking his Skiff
oil on canvas 73.6 x 92.7 cm
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA

1878 Rue Halévy, view from the sixth floor
oil on canvas 59.5 x 73 cm
Museum Barberini, Potsdam

1878 Rooftops under snow
oil on canvas 65 x 81 cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

1878 Portrait of Paul Hugot
oil on canvas 228.6 x 101.6 cm
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK

1878 Perissoires
oil on canvas 156 x 109 cm
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Rennes, France

1878 Fishing
oil on canvas 157 x 113 cm
Private Collection

c1878 Notre-Dame de Paris, view from the quays
oil on canvas 24 x 32.5 cm
Private Collection

c1878 Bather preparing to dive
oil on canvas 117 x 89 cm
Private Collection

c1878 Banks of the Yerres
oil on board 15 x 22 cm
Private Collection

1878 The Parc Monceau
oil on canvas (Dimesions not found)
Private Collection

1878 The artist's brother in his garden
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX

c1878 The painter under his parasol
oil on canvas 80 x 65 cm
 Private Collection

c1879 Self-Portrait with a hat
graphite on off-white paper 49 x 31.5 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1879 Portrait of Jules Richemont
oil on canvas 100 x 81 cm
Private Collection

1879 Portrait of Georges Roman
oil on canvas 74.5 x 92.5 cm
Galerie Michael Haas, Berlin

1880 Balcony, Boulevard Haussmann
oil on canvas 69 x 62 cm
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

1880 At the coffee shop
oil on canvas 155 x 115 cm
Musee des Beaux-Arts Rouen, France