Brushing up on water

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE first picked up a paintbrush in earnest at the age of 27, when he and his brothers inherited their father’s fortune in 1874. Over the next 15 years or so he turned out a series of paintings many of which stretch the eye along exhilarating perspectives: views from a balcony of Baron Haussmann’s broad boulevards in Paris, pedestrians on the sweep of the Pont de l’Europe with its giant iron girders, straw-hatted house painters inspecting their handiwork on a street that shoots off into the distance, an oarsman in shirtsleeves and a top hat plying a stretch of the Seine at Petit Gennevilliers.

Fifty Caillebotte paintings, many of them from private collections and rarely seen in public, have been captivating visitors at a new show in Paris. Photographs by Caillebotte’s brother, Martial, who shared his elder sibling’s fascination with Paris’s urban transformation, as well as sailing boats and life on the river, echo the paintings while also offering detailed depictions of family life among the prosperous French of the Belle Époque.

Caillebotte had an academic training, but quickly fell under the Impressionists’ spell, blending their use of broken brushwork and reflected light with a more realist style. An early painting from 1876 shows the Caillebotte family at lunch. The carefully observed reflections from glass decanters, silver settings and the polished table provide splashes of light in the dining room’s dark opulence. “A painting clear like glass, bourgeois in its exactitude,” wrote Emile Zola of Caillebotte’s best known picture, “Les Raboteurs” (“The Floor Planers”), in which three naked- torsoed workmen are shown on their knees preparing a parquet floor as the light pours in through a floor-length window.

An 1883 profile portrait of Henri Cordier, an eminent Sinologist, writing in his study surrounded by books and papers reveals a touch of Edgar Degas. The vigour and immediacy of “Oarsman in a Top Hat”, viewed by an invisible passenger, is conveyed by deft Renoir-like strokes as a boat skims through the pale green surface of the rippling water.

Wealthy enough not to have to worry about selling his work, Caillebotte championed the Impressionist cause. He funded exhibitions (his own work appeared in a couple), bought his friends’ paintings at generous prices and paid Claude Monet’s rent. In return, Monet, together with Auguste Renoir, took Caillebotte—already an excellent oarsman—out sailing.

By the late-1880s, Caillebotte’s output had dwindled as he refocused his energies on his extensive gardens at Petit Gennevilliers, on the edge of the Seine near Argenteuil, as well as yacht racing. He set up his own shipyard and designed prize-winning boats, Martial faithfully photographing in his footsteps. Late paintings in the show feature regattas in the stiff breeze, tranquil river scenes or winding, flower-lined paths and kitchen gardens.

In 1894 Caillebotte died, aged only 45. In his will he left 67 Impressionist paintings to the French state, which mulled over the bequest for two years before accepting just 38, now the core of Musée d’Orsay’s Impressionist collection. The rest were later sold to Albert Barnes of Philadelphia.

Caillebotte left hundreds of his own canvasses to his family. They rarely come up for auction. “Man on a Balcony” sold for $14.3m in 2000; today it would fetch twice that figure. Long hidden from view, Caillebotte’s paintings have, in recent years, begun to be put on public display, both in Paris and elsewhere. Visitors leave this particular show thirsting for more.