More than any other French Impressionist, painter Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) observed and depicted the many men in his life, including his brothers and friends, employees, and the workers and bourgeois in his Parisian neighborhood. Male subjects feature prominently in some of his best-known works, such as The Floor Scrapers, Man at His Bath, Young Man at His Window, Boating Party, and Paris Street, Rainy Day. The originality of his paintings of men are fully explored for the first time in this catalogue, published to accompany a major international exhibition co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Musee d'Orsay, and Art Institute of Chicago. Alongside paintings, drawings, and photographs, as well as an appendix featuring maps and new biographical research that sheds light on Caillebotte's social network, this volume includes historically grounded thematic essays by curators and leading scholars. By exploring the complex and varied facets of Caillebotte's identity-as son, brother, soldier, bachelor, amateur, sportsman, and so on-these essays pose questions of identity, leaving space for ambiguous and fluid expressions of gender and masculinity-for both Caillebotte and the larger late nineteenth-century French world. Musee d'OrsayOctober 8, 2024-January 19, 2025J. Paul Getty MuseumGetty CenterMarch 25-May 25, 2025Art Institute of ChicagoTBD, 2025Accompanying a major international loan exhibition, GustaveCaillebotte: Painting Men offers a fascinating array of essays that explorecomplex questions of masculinity and virility in the art of this stillenigmatic painter. The book features the wisdom of many seasoned scholars ofImpressionism, but it is also noteworthy for the contributions of a newgeneration of authors, whose fresh eyes and new voices help bring the artist'sworld vividly to life. - George T.M. Shackelford, Deputy Director, Kimbell ArtMuseum "The essays inside this beautifully illustrated catalogueoffer groundbreaking insights into a dominant, if largely ignored, theme inCaillebotte's work. A major contribution to the existing scholarship onthe artist, this book will be a standard reference for years to come."-MarninYoung, author of Realism in the Age of Impressionism: Painting and thePolitics of TimeGustave Caillebotte remains the most mysterious core member of theImpressionist movement. This catalogue includes the latest scholarship on theartist by contemporary experts in the field—museum and academic art historiansbased in France and the United States—bringing fresh readings to Caillebotte’sknown work as well as investigations of several paintings only recently arrivedin the public sphere. It is spectacularly illustrated with the best of theartist’s oeuvre, definitively establishing the striking singularity ofCaillebotte’s artistic achievement. —Mary Morton, Curator of French Paintings,National Gallery of Art
