Until January 19, the museum is organizing its first major exhibition dedicated to the impressionist. In his paintings, the capital transformed by Haussmann is in the spotlight.
To paint “the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent” invited Baudelaire… This modern Paris, Gustave Caillebotte began working on it in the 1870s. From his urban landscapes to interiors such as the famous Parquet planersParis, as he saw it, fascinated him. Between Baron Haussmann who transformed urban planning, Eiffel has not yet built his tower but already steel bridges, the capital is covered in iron and grandiose buildings, which the artist is keen to sublimate with outrageous perspectives , a composition inspired by emerging photography which captures the moment.
The Bridge of Europe1876 – 1877
In the VIIIe district of Paris, the Pont de l’Europe overlooks the Saint-Lazare station, opened in 1837. The painter has just moved into these bourgeois neighborhoods in the west of the capital. He illustrates them more and more. The largest of the two existing paintings of the place is a wide plan dated 1876. Steel is omnipresent. A man leans on the railing watching the traffic between the heavy crosspieces of the beams. Behind him, in the light, a man in a top hat walks in front of a woman in the shadows. We will not know more about these beings, their relationship or lack of relationship. On the other hand, the station has never been painted so clearly. Monet, for example, was especially interested in the steam from the locomotives which fogged the site. In the distance, the smoke from machines entering and exiting makes a permanent spectacle. And everyone, bourgeois or worker, finds interest in this still new spectacle of the industrial world in progress.
Genève, association of the friends of the Petit Palais Rheinisches Bildarchiv Cologne
Paris street, rainy weather1877
Exhibited in the middle of a large blue room at the Musée d’Orsay, we only see him. Paris street, rainy weather is even the largest painting ever painted by Gustave Caillebotte, measuring 2m12 x 2m76! Loaned by The Art Institute of Chicago, the impressive new Paris is once again represented. Cobblestones, wide boulevards with sidewalks, Haussmannian buildings are erected all around the characters. In the foreground, we see a couple where the man is in the light and the woman in the shadows. Hanging on the second and fifth floors of the Haussmann buildings on Place de Dublin (VIIIe) equipped with gas burners, the iron balconies overlook passers-by.
The Art Institute of Chicago
Also readOrsay Museum: “For Gustave Caillebotte, Impressionism is humanism”
Balcony1880
From his new apartment on Boulevard Haussmann, Gustave Caillebotte paints men posing on his balcony. The avenues below seem like canyons and the height almost makes you dizzy. Balcony returns to a strong attachment to the impressionist movement, particularly in the foliage of the trees while the shaded part uses a more classic technique. By these effects that no longer had Paris street, rainy weather et The Bridge of Europe, Caillebotte plays on the contrast between presence and absence, interior and exterior, culture and nature. Such hybrid works are a real novelty for the time.
Photo Josse / Bridgeman Images
Until January 19, 2025 at Orsay museum
