The exhibition, the first dedicated to the painter at the Musée d’Orsay since its opening in 1986, is constructed chronologically, from the 1870s to 1894. Paris, his hometown, is often the backdrop for his paintings.
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“Caillebotte, he’s a Parisian“, explains Paul Perrin, curator of the exhibition “Caillebotte, Painting Men”. The painter was born in 1848 and grew up in Baron Haussmann’s Paris during the Second Empire. “He will inherit his parents’ great fortune, which will allow him to not have to sell his paintings and thus to have enormous freedom”explains Paul Perrin, curator of the exhibition.
Caillebotte’s ambition was to revolutionize painting through his framing choices and viewing angles and thus went against the academic rules of the time. “Caillebotte uses Haussmannian architecture in Paris to invent new points of view“, says the curator of the exhibition.
A balcony, boulevard Haussmann.
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© Josse / Bridgeman Images / musée d’Orsay
“For example in this painting entitled “Balcony”a man poses on the balcony of Caillebotte’s apartment on Boulevard Haussmann. From this balcony, the man sees a person sitting on a bench from above.observe Paul Perrin. “The diving movement is similar to a cinematographic image. Somehow, Caillebotte anticipates photographs and cinema with his unexpected points of view”, reminds the commissioner.
The artist’s specificity also lies in the choice of his subjects. In the table, the “Parquet planers” (1875)usually shown at d’Orsay, it represents men, shirtless, kneeling on the ground, planing a parquet floor.
“At the time, critics were divided“, explains Paul Perrin. “Many find the subject vulgar, these characters do not correspond to the aesthetic canons of the time“, he explains.
Parquet planers.
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© Musée d’Orsay, dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt.
After seeing his painting “Parquet planers” refused at the salon of 1875, Gustave Caillebotte decided to join the emerging impressionist movement. He then rubbed shoulders with Renoir, Monet, Degas. He will become their friend and patron.
In the exhibition presented until January 19 at the Musée d’Orsay, Gustave Caillebotte immortalizes, with his brush, his daily life. A daily life that still appeals to us two centuries later.
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