By Judy Carmack Bross
Classic Chicago: When you are abroad, do people ask you about the Art Institute’s Paris Street: Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte? Gloria Groom: It is beloved! and the belle of the ball at both of its appearances in Paris and Los Angeles at the Caillebotte exhibitions. Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877, cat. 39 Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877. The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection, 1964.336.
Having just come from the installation 120 works exploring the life of Impressionist artist Gustave Caillebotte at the Art Institute of Chicago– including paintings and drawings, photographs, examples of his own important collection, and ephemera from his little-known and short-lived life–Curator Gloria Groom told us of the excitement of fleshing out his importance of his life for Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World opening June 29.
“The more I learn about Gustave’s family and upbringing, and what he accomplished in his short life of just 45 years, the more I admire him. It’s true he had both opportunities the wealth of his father who also supported his decision to move from law to art, but that said, he could have followed the more traditional path to fame which meant exhibiting at the state sponsored Salon. Instead, he aligned himself and became the most important supporter of the alternative artists’ group, who came to be known as the Impressionists. His dedication and loyalty to these artists—through purchases, exhibition organizing and his early will and testament offering their works to the French state so that they would be part of French cultural history long before Impressionism was recognized as a national treasure—continues to amaze me. I would have liked to have known him!”
Probably the least-known Impressionist because of his early death and the fact that his paintings remained for years in the collection of his brother and his heirs, he had revolutionary ideas about depicting everyday subjects. Many of his paintings are of a close radius to his apartment close to the Gare St. Lazarre. “He was an incredible collector whose gift to the French state in 1894 was the foundation of today’s Musée d’Orsay,” Groom said. “He bought many paintings by Monet and Renoir for example. He believed in everyone but didn’t want to impose his paintings on others, nor did he seek to be represented by a dealer like Durand-Ruel who sold Impressionists works to the Americans.”
Gustave Caillebotte. Boating Party, about 1877-78. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Purchased thanks to the exclusive patronage of LVMH, 2022, RF MO P 2022 5. Photo courtesy of GrandPalaisRMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Sophie Crépy.
The Caillebotte exhibition which runs through October 5, appeared previously at the Musée d’Orsay and the Getty, and will contain more works at the previous locations. “There are 70 paintings and 26 drawings in the show, with many paintings and drawings belonging to his family. When they heard of the Los Angeles fires, the family was reluctant to send them there from the d’Orsay, but realizing that the Getty is a safe haven and indeed hilltop fortress, they agreed for which we are very grateful!”
Gustave Caillebotte. A Traffic Circle, Boulevard Haussmann, 1880. Private collection. Image courtesy of Bridgeman Images.
The internationally acclaimed scholar and author on 19th Century painting, Groom is currently Chair of Painting and Sculpture of Europe and the David and Mary Winton Green Curator at the Art Institute. Having played a key role in international Impressionistic exhibitions and led the creations of catalogs including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Gaugin, Manet and Cezanne. In 2016, she received the title of Chevalier in the Légion d’honneur.
Gustave Caillebotte. Young Man at His Window, 1876. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2021.67.
“The Getty acquired Caillebotte’s “Young Man at the Window” a few years ago and soon both they and the D’Orsay were interested in a Caillebotte show. I wanted the Art Institute to be in on this. Their shows underscored his predilection for painting portraits and genre scenes of his largely male family and friends, but we broadened the concept to include the full scope of his interest and achievement in painting ‘his world’.”
Gustave Caillebotte. Nude on a Couch, about 1880. The Minneapolis Museum of Art, The John R. Van Derlip Fund, 67.67.
Speaking of the Getty painting, Groom told us:
The curators of the exhibition, Paul Perrin at the Musée d’Orsay and Scott Allan at the Getty, were fortunate enough to have stood at the very spot by the second-floor window of Caillebotte’s family home where ‘The Young Man at the Window’ was painted. The view onto the Boulevard Malesherbes is the same and the window itself has not changed.
“A few months later, I was fortunate to have had a similar experience on the wrap-around balcony in the apartment where Gustave and his brother Martial lived on the corner off Boulevard Haussmann and Avenue Gluck. Again, except for the department store, Galerie Lafayette which has replaced the apartment buildings on the opposite side of the boulevard, I felt the same excitement that the artist must have watching traffic and looking down from the 4th floor (to Americans, the 5th floor), onto the same view.”
We asked Groom when she first learned of the artist.
Gustave Caillebotte. The Pont de l’Europe, 1876. Association des Amis du Petit Palais, Genève. Image courtesy of the Milwaukee Art Museum. Photo by John. R. Glembin.
Gustave Caillebotte. Floor Scrapers, 1875. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Gift of the Caillebotte heirs through Auguste Renoir, 1894, RF 2718. Photo courtesy of Musée d’Orsay, ⓒ RMN-Grand Palais / Franck Raux.
“Caillebotte was introduced in my 19th century art history classes in the later 1970s only with the two best known paintings: the Art Institute’s “Paris Street” and “Floor Scrapers” which was still at the Jeu de Paume museum, until the Musée d’Orsay opened in 1986.
“He trained at first to be an academic painter and was traditional in many ways. He realistically portrayed Paris as it became modern, framing his subjects with a photographer’s eye and moving fluidly between the large expressive strokes of an Impressionist or the controlled and precise brushwork à la Vermeer. He focused on members of his family and friends to whom he sometimes gave his paintings.”
A visitor to the Art Institute exhibition will learn many fascinating things about Caillebotte’s life, his family and friends, from research done in the French National Archives as well as the family archives. In addition to buying paintings and drawings done by his artist friends, Caillebotte and his brother amassed an encyclopedic collection of stamps which now resides in the British Museum. In the last decades of his life he not only raced in regattas but built his own boats.
“His paintings are immersive and invite us to walk into the Paris we love,” Groom said.
Gustave Caillebotte. In a Café, 1880. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, RF 1943 70, on deposit at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen. Photo courtesy of GrandPalaisRMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Martine Beck-Coppola.
For more information about Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World: visit: www.artic.edu
