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Paris. Rainy day

Gustave Caillebotte • Painting, 1877, 212×276 cm
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About the artwork
Alternative titles: Paris, A Rainy Day
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Genre scene, Urban landscape
Style of art: Impressionism
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1877
Size: 212×276 cm
Artwork in selections: 101 selections

Description of the artwork «Paris. Rainy day»

Painting By Gustave Caillebotte "Paris street. Rainy day" became part of the collection of the art Institute of Chicago until the mid-twentieth century. Relatives of the artist sold it to the founder of the Chrysler automobile Corporation, and the next buyer was the Museum. This acquisition sparked excitement and enthusiasm around the name of the artist. Inspired by this painting, art critic and curator at new York Museum of modern art kirk, Varnado wrote the only still research on the life and work of Gustave Caillebotte.

Each painting Caillebotte, which is from the private collection suddenly gets into the Museum hall, not only delights the audience and professionals, but also provokes art historians to forget everything they knew about impressionism, and rewrite the story again.

Written in 1877 and first shown at the Third impressionist exhibition, the painting "Paris street. Rainy day" according to the scale, composition and mood much closer to the postimpressionist search than to clean the paintings of the Impressionists. Her tone is more appropriate and easier to compare with "A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte" Sulfur than "Ball at the Moulin de La Galette" Renoir. American researchers call conceptual Caillebotte an impressionist painter – his paintings are often the result of long, almost engineering work on the precision of composition, correctness of lines, the transmission instant, a fleeting impression of the state of nature. In European articles reviews say that Caillebotte was a pure realist and impressionist techniques were used sparingly and only as an experiment.

It's easy to forget, when reading a biography, Gustave Caillebotte was 10 years younger than his fellow Impressionists. For many years it remained for them the financial support and patron – and in the eyes of posterity is often represented a kind of rich, penetrating and judicious patron of art. In fact, in 1877 Renoir was 36 years old, Monet – 37, and Kirottu – 29. And when, in 1870, the 34-year-old Degas hatred hissed through clenched teeth the name of Baron Haussmann and to the spleen and impotent despair did not want to see rebuilt Paris, Gustave was just 22 – and he was in love with this new, solemn, secular, industrial, a modern Paris.

His "Paris street. Rainy day" is the anthem for the new Paris, the city that looks today exactly the same as in 1877. British art critic and columnist for the Guardian, Jason Farago joked that Cabotto managed to convey two things are consistently true to describe the life of Paris at all times: the sky is most often grey, in a fashion unchanged is black. But, of course, is not the only merit of the artist.

The amazing effects of this picture: sad, but not tragic sense of detachment and strangeness of passers-by in the big city and the feeling of grandeur and immensity of the city. This last effect is due to the deliberate improper construction of perspective – so urban area of Dublin (which is little changed since then) would look like if the photographer will be on the road and will send the camera with a wide angle lens upwards. But from this point of view, the artist looks at the city itself, and people going in different directions, already from the top down. A sense of wholeness and harmony of the composition in such an optical inconsistency makes the picture a surprisingly spacious, fascinating and real. Kirk, Varnado argues that this painting and a few types of Caillebotte's Paris translated from the rank of minor Impressionists in a series of exclusive, unique and never comparable artists of the XIX century.

Author: Anna Sidelnikova
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