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Nathalia Brodskaïa and Victoria Charles

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ISBN: 978-1-68325-693-9

Nathalia Brodskaïa and Victoria Charles

 

 

 

 

Gustave

Caillebotte

(1848-1894)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“At last, I will name Mr Caillebotte, a young painter of the most beautiful courage who does not give up in front of full-size modern subjects. When his talent has softened a little, Mr Caillebotte will certainly be one of the boldest of the group.”

– Émile Zola

Contents

Biography

The Impressionists and Academic Painting

The First Impressionist Exhibition

List of Illustrations

Biography

1848: Gustave Caillebotte is born on 19 August as the eldest of three sons of the cloth merchant Martial Caillebotte and his third wife Céleste Daufresne in Paris.

1857-1862: Caillebotte attends the public school Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Vanves and following his graduation begins his study of law.

1869: In April Caillebotte completes his undergraduate studies with the diplôme de bachelier en droit.

1870: After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, he is drafted into the Garde nationale mobile de la Seine. He receives a temporary exemption and in July of the same year he completes his law studies successfully with the license en droit.

1871: Caillebotte is dismissed from military service. He travels with his brothers Alfred and René Caillebotte to Sweden and Norway.

1872: He embarks with his father on a journey to Italy. In Naples he visits the painter Giuseppe de Nittis, whereupon he paints his earliest known paintings such as A Road near Naples. In the same year he studies under the French painter Léon Bonnat.

1873: After his admission at the École des Beaux-Arts Caillebotte enrolls in various painting courses, but he only visits the drawing class by Adolphe Yvon. His classmates include Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

1874: Caillebotte participates in the planning of the first exhibition of the Impressionist group with Degas, Monet, and Renoir, which takes place in the same year in Paris. On 25 December his father dies and leaves the family, in addition to a large sum of money, several tenements, estates, bonds, and fixed income. Caillebotte’s mother retains the estate in Yerres, where Caillebotte painted numerous landscapes until 1879.

1876: In this and the following years (1877, 1879, 1880, and 1892) Caillebotte finances and organises Impressionist exhibitions. In autumn his younger brother René Caillebotte dies at the age of twenty-five, after which the artist wrote his first will.

1878: Caillebotte’s mother dies.

1879: The family house in Yerres is sold.

1880: After four years of membership Caillebotte becomes vice president in the Parisian sailing club Cercle de la Voile de Paris. He shares the passion for sailing – a motif which appears in many of his pictures – with his youngest brother, Martial Caillebotte.

1881: Caillebotte purchases a country house in Petit Gennevilliers.

1882: Caillebotte tries to be a boat builder.

1885: The artist founds under the name Chantiers Luce his own boat building operation.

1887: Caillebotte moves to the estate at Petit Gennevilliers, the surroundings of which he depicts in his paintings.

1888: Along with Armand Guillaumin Caillebotte is invited to Brussels to the opening of the 1884 annual exhibition of Brussels’ artists association Les XX (Les Vingt). The exhibiting artists included, amongst others, Paul Signac and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

1894: Caillebotte dies on 21 February at the age of forty-five due to a stroke he suffered while working on a landscape painting in his garden at Petit Gennevilliers.