Waldemar Januszczak TV - Impressionniste online - Huffington Post online -
Another of the keenest people-watchers among the Impressionists: Gustav Caillebotte. Waldemar Januszczak, The Impressionists III: Painting and Revolution: Painting the People, BBC 2011
His pictures tease your eyes and stretch them. ibid.
It’s called The Floor Scrapers ... This is just about the first portrayal in art of the urban workman. ibid.
Gustave Caillebotte, whose personal works were forgotten until recently, was all together a recognized painter and a generous patron of the Impressionist movement.
He was born in 1848 in a very rich family which made its fortune in textiles industry then in real estate business as Baron Haussmann was rebuilding Paris.
Engineer by profession, but also former student of the Fine Arts School of Paris where he studied with Léon Bonnat, he met Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Pierre Auguste Renoir in 1874 and helped them organize their 1st group exhibition in Paris this same year ...
In 1875, as he wishes to make his public beginnings as a painter, he submitted a work to the Official Salon which was refused, thus encouraging him to exhibit in 1876, with the aid of Renoir, at the second exhibition of the Impressionist group. His works and in particular the The Floor Scrapers were noticed and appreciated. Consequently he will take part in the subsequent exhibitions of the Impressionist Group. Impressionniste online
Paradoxically, Gustave Caillebotte was the odd man out among the French Impressionist painters. This in spite of the fact that he was an enthusiastic and effective participant in the group’s activities, and made major contributions to its struggle for recognition and eventual success. Caillebotte not only exhibited his work in five of the group’s eight independent exhibitions held during the 1870s and ’80s, but also made financial contributions that made several of the exhibitions possible. The son of a wealthy manufacturer, Caillebotte was a key early patron of the Impressionists, in the process amassing the remarkable collection that today comprises the core of the holdings of the Musée d’Orsay. He was respected both personally and professionally. When Caillebotte died at the age of just 46, Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien that, ‘he is one we can really mourn, he was good and generous, and a painter of talent to boot.’ Yet Caillebotte was never considered a true member of the inner circle of the Impressionists. Art scholars have long recognized this, but have never fully explained it. Huffington Post online