Caillebotte was born at his family's home on rue du
Faubourg-Saint-Denis in Paris, and lived on that street until 1866 when
his father had a home built on rue de Miromesnil in Paris. The
Caillebottes began spending many of their summers in Yerres, a town on
the Yerres River about 12 miles south of Paris, in 1860, when Martial
Caillebotte, Sr. bought a large property there. It was around this time
that Caillebotte probably began to draw and paint. Many of
Caillebotte's paintings depict members of his family and daily domestic
life; Young Man at His Window, 1875, shows René in the home on rue de
Miromesnil, The Orange Trees, 1878, depicts Martial Jr. and his cousin
Zoë in the garden of the family property at Yerres, and Portraits in
the Country, 1875, includes Caillebotte's mother along with his aunt,
cousin, and a family friend.
Caillebotte earned a law degree in 1868 and a license to practice law
in 1870. Shortly afterwards, he was drafted to fight in the
Franco-Prussian war, and served in the Garde Mationale Mobile de la
Seine. After the war, Caillebotte began visiting the studio of painter
Léon Bonnat, where he began to seriously study painting. In 1873,
Caillebotte entered into the École des Beaux-Arts, but apparently did
not spend much time there. Around this time, Caillebotte met and
befriended several artists working outside the official French academy,
including Edgar Degas and Giuseppe de Nittis, and attended (but did not
participate in) the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874.
Caillebotte's sizable allowance and the inheritance he received after
the death of his father in 1874 and his mother in 1878 allowed him to
paint without the pressure to sell his work. It also allowed him to
help fund Impressionist Exhibitions and support his fellow artists and
friends (including Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro
among others) by purchasing their works and, at least in the case of
Monet, paying the rent for their studios. In addition, Caillebotte used
his wealth to fund a variety of hobbies for which he was quite
passionate, including stamp collecting (his collection is now in the
British Museum), orchid horticulture, yacht building, and even textile
design (the women in his paintings Madame Boissière Knitting, 1877, and
Portrait of Madame Caillebotte, 1877, may be working on patterns
created by Caillebotte).
Caillebotte's style belongs to the school of Realism. As did his
predecessors Jean-Francois Millet and Gustave Courbet, as well his
contemporary Degas, Caillebotte aimed to paint reality as it existed
and as he saw it, hoping to reduce painting's inherent theatricality.
He also shared the Impressionists' commitment to optical truth.
Caillebotte painted many domestic, familial scenes, interiors, and
figures in a landscape at Yerres, but he is most well known for his
paintings of urban Paris, such as The Floor Scrapers, 1875, Le pont de
l'Europe, 1876, and Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877. These paintings were
quite controversial for their banal and often lower-class subjects, and
for their exaggerated, plunging perspective. The tilted ground common
to these paintings is very characteristic of Caillebotte's work, which
may have been strongly influenced by Japanese prints and the new
technology of photography. Cropping and "zooming in," techniques which
are also commonly found in Caillebotte's oeuvre, may also be the result
of his interest in photography. A large number of Caillebotte's works
also employ a very high vantage point, including his many balcony
paintings such as Vue des toits, effet de neige, 1878 and Boulevard vu
d'en haut, 1880.
Caillebotte's painting career slowed dramatically in the 1890s, when he
stopped making large canvases and showing his work. He acquired a
property at Petit Gennevilliers, on the banks of the Seine near
Argenteuil, in 1881, and moved there permanently in 1888. He devoted
himself to gardening and to building and racing yachts, and spent much
time with his brother, Martial, and his friend Renoir, who often came
to stay at Petit Gennevilliers. It is alleged by many sources that
before his death, he had an affair with a much younger woman, Emilie
Schlauch, but this can not be confirmed or denied based on the
historical evidence that has been left to us. Caillebotte died while
working in his garden at Petit Gennevilliers in 1894 of pulmonary
congestion, and was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
For many years, Caillebotte's reputation as a painter was superseded by
his reputation as a supporter of the arts. Seventy years after his
death, however, art historians began reevaluating his artistic
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.
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