A new look at French Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte

Monet … Degas … Renoir. When we think of French Impressionism, it’s the usual suspects who spring to mind. But one lesser-known artist is ripe for rediscovery.

“Gustave Caillebotte is probably the least-known of the Impressionist painters,” said Gloria Groom, co-curator of a new exhibition of the works of Caillebotte, now on display at the Art Institute of Chicago. “I think he’s still not completely integrated into that story. He’s still kind of the outsider.”

The museum has long been home to the artist’s most recognizable painting, “Paris Street – Rainy Day.”

“People, they may not know Gustave Caillebotte’s name, but if you say the painting with the umbrellas, they all know it,” said Groom. “And so you start thinking, okay, it’s all about this bourgeois couple walking down the street. But it’s not, because there’s a painter with a ladder, the charwoman who’s opening her umbrella, all these different types of people.”

“Paris Street – Rainy Day” played a supporting role in the beloved movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. While it was out on loan, museum-goers were bereft. “We got letters,” said Groom. “But you can’t be part of an exhibition to be a partner if you don’t lend the major work for the exhibition. So, we made that sacrifice. And now we’re celebrating its return.”

The exhibition looks at Caillebotte’s work from a new perspective. While his peers were painting ballerinas and landscapes, Caillebotte’s canvases focused on men to a degree unusual for the time.

Groom said, “He’s looking at the men in his life, he’s looking at the relationships. But he’s not just doing, you know, macho masculinity. He’s doing men in interiors, men on sofas, men looking out a window, kind of turning the tables in many ways.”

Some of the paintings scandalized the French art establishment. “The Floor Scrapers” was rejected from a prestigious art exhibition.

And, at another exhibition, a painting featuring a nude man was relegated to a small, inaccessible room. “It’s a male nude, but not an Adonis,” said Groom. “It’s shocking even today. It’s a beautiful, beautiful painting, and it’s sensuous. Let’s face it, it’s sensuous!”

When this exhibition opened in Paris last year with the title “Painting Men,” some critics condemned what they considered the show’s insinuation of Caillebotte’s homosexuality. The artist never married, but shared the last decade or so of his life with a female companion.

But the show moved on to Chicago with a new title – “Painting His World” – which has others saying the changed title minimizes the artist’s focus on the same sex.

Gloria Groom says, quite simply, the paintings speak for themselves: “The paintings are the paintings, and that’s what we’re interested in. We try to open it up to all kinds of interpretations, and people will see what they want to see.”

Gustave Caillebotte died in 1894. He was just 45. All these decades later, people are still seeing what they want to in his beguiling artistry.

      
For more info:

• Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World, at the Art Institute of Chicago (through Oct. 5)
• Exhibition catalogue: “Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men,” edited by Scott Allan, Gloria Groom and Paul Perrin (J. Paul Getty Museum), in Hardcover, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org
• Gustave Caillebotte. “Paris Street; Rainy Day,” 1877. The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. Worcester Collection
• Gustave Caillebotte. “Floor Scrapers,” 1875. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Gift of the Caillebotte heirs through Auguste Renoir, 1894. Photo courtesy of Musée d’Orsay, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn/Franck Raux
• Gustave Caillebotte. “Man at His Bath,” 1884. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum purchase with funds by exchange from an Anonymous gift, Bequest of William A. Coolige, Juliana Cheney Edwards Collection, and from the Charles H. Bayley Picture and Painting Fund, Mary S. and Edward J. Holmes Fund, Fanny P. Mason Fund in memory of Alice Thevin, Arthur Gordon Tompkins Fund, Gift of Mrs. Samuel Parkman Oliver – Eliza R. Oliver Fund, Sophie F. Friedman Fund, Robert M. Rosenberg Family Fund, and funds donated in honor of George T.M. Shackelford, Chair, Art of Europe, and Arthur K. Solomon Curator of Modern Art 1996–2011. Photo © 2025 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Footage courtesy of Musée d’Orsay Digital Department/YouBLive

     
Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Steven Tyler. 

     
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