Gustave Caillebotte: Masterpieces in Colour

Wednesday, January 8, 2020 Edit

Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism

Gustave Caillebotte: Masterpieces in Colour Details

Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894) was a French painter, member and patron of the group of artists known as Impressionists, though he painted in a much more realistic manner than many other artists in the group. Caillebotte was noted for his early interest in photography as an art form. Caillebotte's style belongs to the School of Realism but was strongly influenced by his Impressionist associates. In common with his precursors Jean-François Millet and Gustave Courbet as well his contemporary Degas Caillebotte aimed to paint reality as it existed and as he saw it, hoping to reduce painting's inherent theatricality. Perhaps because of his close relationship with so many of his peers, his style and technique varies considerably among his works, as if "borrowing" and experimenting, but not really sticking to any one style. At times, he seems very much in the Degas camp of rich-colored realism (especially his interior scenes) and at other times, he shares the Impressionists' commitment to "optical truth" and employs an impressionistic pastel softness and loose brush strokes most similar to Renoir and Pissarro, though with a less vibrant palette. Caillebotte's painting career slowed dramatically in the early 1890s, when he stopped making large canvases. He died of pulmonary congestion while working in his garden at Petit-Gennevilliers in 1894 at age 45, and was interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.