CAILLEBOTTE, Gustave

Caillebotte’s subject matter included almost the entire Impressionist range: rooftops, town squares, gardens, oarsmen, sailors, swimmers, portraits, landscapes and still-lifes.

Caillebotte’s subject matter included almost the entire Impressionist range: rooftops, town squares, gardens, oarsmen, sailors, swimmers, portraits, landscapes and still-lifes.

Caillebotte was especially interested in light in the open, and fleeting impressions of a kind hitherto not considered proper subjects, while he was drawn thematically to human figures and aspects of urban life. His view of Impressionist realism was closest to that of Degas, however, he was also more open than the others to the world of hard physical work, and more emphatic in his willingness to take it as his subject.

Caillebotte painted two versions of the Floor Scrapers, exhibiting both at the second Impressionist show in 1876. It was work he had seen at his parents’ home. This was an aspect of Courbet’s and Millet’s realism adapted to the Impressionist idiom. He emphasized effects of light, the action presented in the painting is that of a moment, and the composition uses novel, Japanese perspective.

Caillebotte often found his subjects near the family home by the river Yerres. In 1880 an acquaintance modelled for his lifesize portrait of a caf� regular. The subject, technique, colouring, use of space, and subtle deployment of the mirror, all have something of Manet or Degas. But Caillebotte outdid Manet in expressing an entire social psychology in this portrait of a good-humoured, unfooled, slightly crafty man of the lower middle class.

The image shows pedestrians in the Place de l’Europe in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The plaza is a large bridge (Pont de l’Europe, English: Europa Bridge) joining six avenues, each named for a European capital, over the railroad yards at Gare Saint-Lazare. The view is from the rue de Vienne, looking towards the centre of the plaza.

Caillebotte exhibited this image at the impressionist exhibition of 1877, alongside Claude Monet’s Le Pont de l’Europe, Gare Saint-Lazare, which gives an alternate view of the bridge.

This painting, which crops passers-by on the bridge spanning the Gare Saint-Lazare’s track approach, is interesting not least for the alert regard Caillebotte the engineer had for the new technology. He did several meticulous studies towards two versions of the painting. The lines of receding perspective in Caillebotte’s work can often draw us with a disquieting violence into a picture’s spatial depth: his perspective recalls the engineer’s drawing board.

This painting is more academic than Impressionist in character. It depicts an intersection near the Saint-Lazare railway station with a wide-angle view.

The lines of receding perspective in Caillebotte’s work can often draw us with a disquieting violence into a picture’s spatial depth: his perspective recalls the engineer’s drawing board. This is true of his large, atmospheric painting of the Place de l’Europe on a rainy day as well. Renoir was to paint a similar scene some years later, but his canvas presented a graceful throng of beautiful women and children. Caillebotte’s painting, by contrast, uses wide, open spaces and figural tensions. His people straightforwardly want to get somewhere. The man in the foreground, so close that he is about to step out of the canvas and has had to be cropped below the knee, has the look of a conqueror, the woman on his arm a companion with the air of an afterthought despite her prettiness.

This painting is more academic than Impressionist in character. It depicts an intersection near the Saint-Lazare railway station with a wide-angle view.

The lines of receding perspective in Caillebotte’s work can often draw us with a disquieting violence into a picture’s spatial depth: his perspective recalls the engineer’s drawing board. This is true of his large, atmospheric painting of the Place de l’Europe on a rainy day as well. Renoir was to paint a similar scene some years later, but his canvas presented a graceful throng of beautiful women and children. Caillebotte’s painting, by contrast, uses wide, open spaces and figural tensions. His people straightforwardly want to get somewhere. The man in the foreground, so close that he is about to step out of the canvas and has had to be cropped below the knee, has the look of a conqueror, the woman on his arm a companion with the air of an afterthought despite her prettiness.

Henri Cordier (1849-1925) was a French linguist, historian, ethnographer, author, editor and Orientalist. He was President of the Soci�t� de G�ographie in Paris. He worked in China from 1869 to 1880, when he returned to France and became a lecturer on the geography and history of the Far East at the School of Oriental Languages in Paris.

Caillebotte and Cordier were certainly friends. In the present portrait, Caillebotte chooses to focus on Cordier’s intellectual side. He is represented deep in concentration, surrounded by books, busy writing in an ill-defined position.

This work reveals the extent to which Caillebotte’s art was characterized by his admiration for impressionistic painting. It shows the riverbank and the landing stage near his house in Le petit Gennevilliers, on the opposite side of the river from Argenteuil. The old wooden bridge at Argenteuil and the pillars of the railroad bridge can be seen in the background.

Caillebotte’s subject matter included almost the entire Impressionist range: rooftops, town squares, gardens, oarsmen, sailors, swimmers, portraits, landscapes and still-lifes.

Caillebotte’s subject matter included almost the entire Impressionist range: rooftops, town squares, gardens, oarsmen, sailors, swimmers, portraits, landscapes and still-lifes.