Gustave Caillebotte. Les Raboteurs de Parquet (The Floor Planers) (1875)

Gustave Caillebotte

Fundamental Paintings to Understand the History of Painting

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Les raboteurs de parquet (The Floor Planers) (1875). Gustave Caillebotte
Oil on canvas. 192 cm x 146 cm
Musée d’Orsay. Paris

Caillebotte was the Impressionist that was a different. We can say that he was “the less Impressionist” of all the members of the movement. Although ironically he was the most “important” as he financed everybody when the economic situation got difficult.

Caillebotte was rich —he had inherited money— and paid his friends’ expenses for a long time. He also bought their works. Due to his charitable spirit, he had the biggest Impressionist collection someone ever had. He had paintings of Cézanne and other invaluable masters. That collection was the basis of the Musée d’Orsay of Paris —the biggest Museum of Impressionism—.

Caillebotte’s style was often more realistic than those of his friends. Although his main concern was light, his results were more “photographic.”

His brushstroke was often not so “impressionist,” and his works turned out to be controversial for the time due to exaggerated and deep perspectives.

He exhibited with the Impressionists in the second exhibition of the group. He presented his work Les raboteurs de parquet, in which some workers worked on a wood floor. At that time, the representation of workers just started to be partially accepted, but only field workers (as in the works of the Realists Millet and Courbet). No representations of city workers performing their duties were accepted yet. Of course the critics considered Caillebotte and this painting as “vulgar.”

Caillebotte did not sell his own paintings, he only bought paintings, and due to his role of patron and to the fact that he painted differently than his friends, the world forgot to appreciate him. He was not recognized as a great painter until the end of the 20th century.

When he died in 1894 and wanted to give his collection, the French government rejected it, due to pressure of the academics. After a couple of years, the collection was partially accepted (and it became part of the Louvre more than three decades later). Almost half of the paintings were rejected with the excuse that “they came from a sick art.”

Recommended links:

Impression, Sunrise (1872), Claude Monet.

Impressionism.

Characteristic Elements of Impressionist Painting.

Timeline: from Neoclassicism till the end of the 19th century.

Monet and the Rouen Cathedral.

Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881), Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Camille Pissarro.

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