`Gustave Caillebotte's

Les Raboteurs de Parquet, 1875

30" x 24"

Caillebotte's most accomplished paintings are of ordinary work and street scenes.  He is best known for his exterior and interior scenes of Paris' new districts, built for the well-to-do bourgeoisie in the 1870s.  In the middle of that decade Caillebotte painted a series depicting workmen taking up a floor in one of those swanky new apartment buildings.   Workers entrusted with such a task were faced with the laborious process of scraping away at the wood (or at least its finish) by hand.  Aside from that, this depiction of men at work renovating a flat has a comfortably familiar feel to it.  The bright sunlight flooding the room enhances the vivid sense of familiarity the picture imparts, as does Caillebotte's attention to mundane details like the clothes heaped in the far corner and the liquid refreshment waiting to one side.

Long relegated to footnote status as simply a wealthy collector and friend of the Impressionists (his collection was bequeathed to the Louvre), Gustave Caillebote is now being recognized as an accomplished Impressionist in his own right.  Through Edgar Degas, Caillebotte met and began exhibiting with the Impressionist painters.  Ultimately, Caillebotte, along with Degas and Pissarro, became a principal organizer of the Impressionist shows in the 1870s.  After that, he retired from active professional engagement, painting in private until his early death.  Degas' influence can be seen in Caillebotte's work, specifically in his color, composition, and subject matter.  Caillebotte's palette, like Degas', is muted - although, unlike his friend's predominantly brown tonalities, Caillebotte tended to favor a basic range of grays.  Strong diagonal lines describing a deep, even somewhat exaggerated perspective - called orthogonals - recur throughout Caillebotte's painting.  They indicate he may have worked with a camera, as Degas did to get his own dramatic yet naturalistic compositions.  Caillebotte did not emulate the intimate human drama of Degas' often narrative pictures, but he did seek to evoke a sense of everyday life.