Caillebotte. Painting men

WRITTEN IN FRENCH

Bourgeois and workers strolling through Haussmann's Paris, floor planers and boaters caught in the act, young bachelors playing cards or observing the city from their balconies, naked men at their toilets... Male figures and portraits of men dominate the work of Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 1894), unlike his colleagues Degas, Manet or Renoir.

As much as his immersive framing and complex perspective effects, the way in which the artist observed and painted the men of his time and those around him constitutes one of his major contributions to Impressionism. At a time of triumph of military virility, bourgeois patriarchy and republican fraternity, Caillebotte subtly questions gender norms and social categories to give substance to a new masculine ideal, both virile and vulnerable, conquering and melancholic, master of public space but also at ease indoors.

Focusing as much on the artist's personality and his sociabilities - his brothers, the Impressionist group or the Cercle de la Voile de Paris - as on his paintings and drawings, known or unknown, this work sheds new light on the life and work of one of the greatest painters of the 19th century.

Exhibition at the musée d'Orsay from October 08th, 2024 to January 19th, 2025.

French
256 pages

Co-publishing by the Musée d'Orsay / Éditions Hazan.