Gustave Caillebotte
French, 1848-1894

Square in Argenteuil, 1880s, early
oil on canvas

Michael Armand Hammer and the Armand Hammer Foundation
Loan



Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait de l'artiste (Self-portrait), ca. 1892, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

COMMENTS

Known principally as the collector who bequeathed the first great group of Impressionist pictures to the French state, Caillebotte was among the organizers of, and participants in, many of the original Impressionist exhibitions. As a painter, his vision was almost always advanced. He favored subjects from daily life in natural poses, although his execution was often tight and linear to the point of academicism. Caillebotte was at his best in his broadly conceived and freely brushed canvases, many of which—this painting is one—were executed in Argenteuil. This fresh and unexpected work probably dates from the early 1880s.

Known primarily for his street scenes of late nineteenth-century Paris with innovative and expansive perspectives, Gustave Caillebotte also painted numerous studies of his gardens and the countryside around his home at Petit Gennevilliers, including this scene of Argenteuil, the village where Monet had lived in the 1870s. While lacking Monet’s deftness with vibrant color, Caillebotte nevertheless conveys the Impressionists’ fascination with light and shadow in this sun-drenched town square. As is typical of the artist, the composition is rigorously organized through the repeated verticals of the central sapling and the more mature trees that line the street. With swift touches of contrasting colors, Caillebotte expertly describes the alternating areas of illumination and darkness produced by sunlight as filtered through the clouds and trees.

- Kirk Varnedoe, Gustave Caillebotte, Yale University Press, 1987