GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE Biography - Other artists & entretainers

 
 

Biography » other artists entretainers » gustave caillebotte

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE
       

Gustave Caillebotte (August 19, 1848 - February 21, 1894), was a French painter, patron of the impressionist art movement, and engineer.

       

Caillebotte inherited a sizable fortune after his father’s death in 1874, which funded his patronage of the arts. Also, in 1874 he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he met impressionist painters Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Pierre Auguste Renoir.

       

His painting style appears to belong to the school of realism, although he helped organize the first impressionist exhibition and enthusiastically collected of impressionist works.

       

Caillebotte’s painting themes were catholic. For example, he painted portraits and interior scenes, urban life, still lifes, and landscapes and seascapes. He often chose an overhead vantage point for his compositions and depicted elegantly dressed figures strolling with the expressionless look of sleep walkers (Boulevard Vu d’en Haut. 1880.). His metropolitan scenes led editor Anne Distel to title a book about him, Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist.

       

For many years, Caillebotte’s reputation as a painter was superseded by his reputation as a supporter of the arts. However, 70 years after his death, art historians began reevaluating his artistic contributions.

       

Just two years before he died, he married Emilie Schlauch.

       

Gustave Caillebotte died in 1894 of pulmonary congestion and was interred in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. In his will, Caillebotte donated his entire collection to the French government and 40 of his works hang in the Musee d’Orsay.

       

His L’Homme au balcon, boulevard Haussmann, painted in 1880, sold for more than $14.3 million in 2000.