Gustave Caillebotte biography

Gustave Caillebotte

Gustave Caillebotte Picture

Birth date August 19, 1848

Death date February 21, 1894

Place France

Alias

Occupation Painter

Category Artist

Biography :: Contributions :: Famous quotes :: Achievements

Biography

Gustave Caillebotte, whose personal works were forgotten until recently, was all together a recognized painter and a generous patron of the Impressionist movement.

He was born in 1848 in a very rich family which made its fortune in textiles industry then in real estate business as Baron Haussmann was rebuilding Paris.

Engineer by profession, but also former student of the Fine Arts School of Paris where he studied with Léon Bonnat, he met Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Pierre Auguste Renoir in 1874 and helped them organize their 1st group exhibition in Paris this same year.

Self-portrait with the palette
1879-80

Private Collection
In 1873, he inherits the great fortune of his father and will be financially independent for the rest of his life.

The floor scrapers
1875
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

In 1875, as he wishes to make his public beginnings as a painter, he submitted a work to the Official Salon which was refused, thus encouraging him to exhibit in 1876, with the aid of Renoir, at the second exhibition of the Impressionist group. His works and in particular the "The floor scrapers " were noticed and appreciated. Consequently he will take part in the subsequent exhibitions of the Impressionist Group.

Caillebotte was rich and generous and will financially help throughout his lifetime his Impressionist friends by buying at high prices their works and by supporting the expenses of their exhibitions. He will be a co-organizer and co-financier of the 3th, 4th, 5th and 7th Impressionist exhibitions, in which he will take part.

In 1881, he buys a house with garden in Petit-Gennevilliers where he will create a number of his works. Highly skilled horticulturist, he corresponds with Monet at Giverny and creates orchises in his greenhouses.

Character with multiple facets, Caillebotte also was a racing yachtsman who had a passion for speed and seeked to improve his boats. Naval architec, he draws and builds his boats in a workshop located on SNECMA's present site. There he will create true thorough-breds of the river, with multiple innovations (silk veil, external ballast, aerodynamic hulls, etc.) with which he will gain many international titles.

Caillebotte painted some 500 works in a style often more realistic than that of his Impressionist friends. The painter will illustrate himself particularly in views of Paris streets made from high balconies, in scenes of working life, natural landscapes of gardens and parks, and in nautical scenes (on the Seine in Argenteuil and Yerres).

His great concern for a realistic painting, his colored notes, and his treatment of light make him well a great Impressionist painter whose work is original and diverse.

Contributions

In his will, Caillebotte donated a large collection to the French government. This collection included sixty-eight paintings by various artists: Camille Pissarro (nineteen), Claude Monet (fourteen), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (ten), Alfred Sisley (nine), Edgar Degas (seven), Paul Cézanne (five), and Édouard Manet (four).

At the time of Caillebotte's death, the Impressionists were still largely condemned by the art establishment in France, which was dominated by Academic art and specifically the Académie des beaux-arts. Because of this, Caillebotte realised that the cultural treasures in his collection would likely disappear into "attics" and "provincial museums". He therefore stipulated that they must be displayed in the Luxembourg Palace (devoted to the work of living artists), and then in the Louvre.

Unfortunately, the French government would not agree to these terms. In February 1896, they finally negotiated terms with Renoir, who was the will's executor, under which they took thirty-eight of the paintings to the Luxembourg. The remaining twenty-nine paintings (one was taken by Renoir in payment for his services as executor) were offered to the French government twice more, in 1904 and 1908, and were both times refused. When the government finally attempted to claim them in 1928, the bequest was repudiated by the widow of Caillebotte's son. Most of the remaining works were purchased by Albert C. Barnes, and are now held by the Barnes Foundation of Philadelphia.

Forty of Caillebotte's own works are now held by the Musée d'Orsay. His L'Homme au balcon, boulevard Haussmann, painted in 1880, sold for more than $14.3 million in 2000."