Gustave Caillebotte - Paris Street; Rainy Day

Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street: Rainy Day, 1877
(The Art Institute of Chicago)

Gustave Caillebotte has always been one of my favorite artists but since he does not have as big a body of work like some of the other Impressionists in the United States, it's not so easy to come across his paintings .  I was really looking forward to seeing one of his most important works, Paris Street;  Rainy Day  at the  Art Institute of Chicago.   Coming face to face with the original work reaffirmed the importance of seeing a work of art in person.  This painting I was so familiar with and studied for my art history classes on many occasions, had the ability to surprise me and take my breath away. I wasn't prepared for it's monumental size - 83 1/2 x 108 3/4" or its dominating presence.  Standing before it, at the entrance of the first gallery of Impressionist paintings, I was transformed to that moment, to that street corner in Paris in 1877.

Caillebotte has captured the transient moment perfectly in this canvas.  He gives the viewer a wide angle view of the modern city with it's inhabitants from all walks of life coexisting within the newly built boulevards of Haussman's Paris.  In the foreground is an upper class couple walking arm in arm, and there are a multitude of other passersby in the background but the sense of disconnect is prevalent in the picture.  All the detached, non-communicative character of the figures occupying the intersection may indicate Caillebotte's disdain for the anonymous and anti-picturesque nature of Haussman's boulevards but also a place with a personal significance, since his family residence that included his studio was just a few blocks away.1  Another typical aspect of Impressionist paintings that is present in Paris Street; Rainy Day - this was probably the artist's own experience.   

Gustave Caillebotte, Le Pont de l'Europe, 1876
(Musee du Petit Palais, Geneva)

Caillebotte was fascinated with the idea of modernity causing a sense of isolation in urban centers and some of his works depict this desolate state of mind very clearly.  Le Pont de l'Europe is another great depiction of this psychological state.  In Paris Street; Rainy Day, the umbrellas seem to reinforce the sense of detachment giving each person their own space.  No one is actually communicating with one another, they all seem to be in their own world. The bourgeois gentleman in the front seems to represent Baudelair's flaneur, the exquisitely turned out, well mannered, gentleman stroller, detached observer.

Unlike most other Impressionists, especially Renoir or Monet, Caillebotte did not represent modernity by ignoring or blurring it but instead giving it a prominent position in his painting.  The gas light in the very middle of his composition dividing the picture plane and the uniformly manufactured umbrellas, as well as the newly constructed, wide boulevards were all products of the industrial innovations of the time period.

Caillebotte's treatment of atmosphere and weather conditions also differs from his Impressionist colleagues.  He has represented the rain by an overcast sky and manipulating different grays to represent the wet cobblestone street. It is not a matter of light reflections and broken brush strokes but highly finished elements in a very deliberately constructed perspective.

Caillebotte was a prolific artist whose style is found to be closer to the school of Realism due to his exacting technique and structured spatial compositions.  He was known for his views of urban Paris as well as interiors with domestic, familial scenes. His interest in photography can be deciphered from the abrupt cropping of some of his compositions and the unusual perspective effects he uses may be due to his interest in Japanese prints.

Gustave Caillebotte was an independently wealthy artist as well as an avid art collector who supported the Impressionists by buying their work and helping to fund their exhibitions.  He left his extensive art collection including some coveted masterpieces to the French government with the stipulation that they exhibit his Impressionist collection as well, which, today constitutes the core of the Musee d'Orsay collection of Impressionist paintings.

I feel Paris Street; Rainy Day is one of the must-see attractions of Chicago.  It is the perfect example of how a great work of art can draw the viewer in, try to understand the time period and contemplate what the artist was trying to get across.

1.  Douglas W. Druick and Gloria Groom, The Age of French Impressionism, Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago, 57

Edouard Manet - Music at the Tuileries

Edouard Manet, Music at the Tuileries, 1862

Edouard Manet, the artist who is considered the link between Realism and Impressionism, painted this lively outdoor scene, set in Tuileries Garden, of wealthy Parisians at their leisure.  Men in dark jackets and light pants with top hats and women in fancy dresses and hats attests to the social status of the group.  We can almost hear the music and the conversation.  Coming from an upper-class family himself, Manet would be present at such events and this was probably his own experience.

Leisure time and recreational activities like listening to music on a Sunday were all parts of modernity.  Manet actually painted himself into this painting in the position of the flaneur, observing the crowd from the left front corner. Manet came from a wealthy family and he was engaged with and knew his way around society, in this respect, he fit Baudelaire's description of a flaneur perfectly. Like Courbet did in  After Dinner at Ornans, he also incorporated his friends into the picture, Baudelair, Theophile Gautier and Baron Taylor as well as his brother Eugene Manet.  

As much as looking for new expressions of art, Manet still wanted to be traditional. He was balancing to see how much he could breakdown tradition and get away with it.  He still wanted to go through traditional channels for exhibiting his work and never wanted to exhibit with the Impressionists.  A lot of people think of him as the'father of modernism.'  The technique he used in this painting creates a really odd flatness.  He  removed the in-between, transitional tones and  butted one color next to the other.  Especially in the umbrella in the front, he used light and dark gray side by side just with a black outline.  

 In his own way he is borrowing from and paying homage to Gustave Courbet in this work. The collective distraction that is present in this painting is very similar to Courbet's Burial at Ornans. The little girls' elaborate dresses and the way they are playing in the ground recall the altar boys' standing on the left side of the Ornans painting.  In Courbet's painting there is a sea of black which is for mourning, here the context changes to become men going out on a city day.  The shock of red in the Beadles costumes in the middle of Courbet's painting is played off with the yellow and blue dresses of the women in the front.  In both paintings, the main elements for each event is hidden, we don't see the body of the deceased for the funeral nor see the music for listening.  The dog in Courbet is replaced by an umbrella in Manet and Manet's brother is in the position of the Veteran of 1783 in Courbet.

Manet's crowd is bigger than Courbet's and there is no sign of religion, it is a scene of leisure.  The people are already gathered in Music at the Tuileries unlike the moment before the burial at Courbet's painting. There is also a difference in their palettes, Manet uses a light palette to suit the occasion and the sunny day is reflected in his tones of yellow, blue and white. While in A Burial at Ornans there is a huge sky up above, Music at Tuileries is packed full of trees.

Manet liked to borrow from the past in his art while stylistically using modern techniques. In this painting he is acknowledging Courbet while leading the way for the young Impressionists with his sketchy brush-strokes, and light color palette.  Overall, it gives us a great picture of the recreation of upper-class society in 1862 Paris.

Modernity - Haussmannization of Paris and "the Painters of Modern Life"

Edouard Manet, Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, 1863

Napoleon  III, believed in the industrialization of France and commissioned Baron Haussmann between 1850 -1870 , to rebuild Paris.  Haussman instigated a very ambitious program of city planning that destroyed the medieval fabric of the city and replaced it with large boulevards, new bridges, an opera house, and avenues giving new perspectives to monuments. Industrialization in the form of railroads and gas lamps were conveniences that aided  the newly forming bourgeoisie to enjoy their leisurely pursuits. Although he had many  passionate critics, the new spaces created by Hausmannization were where the spectacle of Paris was put on display.  These spaces were also where the different classes of society could be seen to 'coexist but not  connect' together.  People complained of  different spheres of society and different quarters that defined Paris overlapping and blurring the lines of traditional conventions. As T. J. Clark points out all these different territories seem to be places laid on for display but also ambiguity, where people are hard to make out, their gestures and expressions unconvincing, their purpose obscure The essential myth of modern life is the marginal, it is ambiguity, it is mixture of classes and classifications, it is anomie and improvisation, it is the reign of generalized illusion .1  All of these characteristics seem to be the elements that can be found in the paintings of Manet and Impressionist artists whom he mentored and influenced.

Charles Baudelair, in his essay of 1863 'The Painter of Modern Life' published in Le Figaro described modernity as 'the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent'.  The main protagonist in modernity was the Flaneur, whom Baudelair described as  "a gentleman stroller of city streets and a detached, well-informed observer with exquisite manners and impeccable dress who wandered around town and observed the goings on.' In this sense all the impressionists were flaneurs and Manet's work is described as the 'realism of the flaneur.'


1.  T.J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life - Paris in the Art of Manet and his followers, (Princeton University Press 1999) 48

Edouard Manet, Un Bar aux Folies-Bergere, 1882

Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863