Gustave Caillebotte was born to an upper-class Parisian family in 1848. His father, Martial Caillebotte (1799-1874) was a judge for the Seine department’s Tibunal de Commerce, and inherited his family's military textile business. His father was twice widowed when he married his mother and they had three boys including Gustave. Gustave spent many summers in Yeres on the Yerres River about 12 miles south of Paris where it is believed he began drawing and painting.
He is best known for his urban images of Paris, and he seems to have had a love of the modern and found many of the modern elements of his time beautiful. In Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877 he shows how compartmentalized each individual is underneath their umbrellas, and surrounded by the towering buildings and street lights. Many of his urban paintings were considered controversial because he exaggerated the perspective to create plunging dynamic views of the city surrounding his subjects. He would tilt the ground to force the scene forward, an offering to the viewer. His urban settings show a conflict between the individual and the onset of the Industrial Revolution, but at the same time they revel in and embrace the modern settings.
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Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877 |
He used light in a very effective way in keeping with the impressionist movement. Especially in his outdoor country paintings the influence of the impressionist style can be seen in his application of paint and color in a dappled multi-colored impression of the brightly lit country-side such as his painting called Baigneur s'apprêtant à plonger done in (1878).
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| Gustave Caillebotte, Baigneur s'apprêtant à plonger, 1878 |
References:
- Gardner's Art Through the Ages, A Global History, 13th ed., by Fred S. Kleiner - Chapters 31
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Caillebotte
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