LES HOMMES DE CAILLEBOTTE

The Art Institute of Chicago’s Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World examines the artist’s portrayals of the people in his life in 19th-century France.

Gloria Groom has helmed many of the Art Institute of Chicago’s blockbuster exhibitions, including those dedicated to Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne. Now, working with peers at Paris’ Musée d’Orsay and Los Angeles’ J. Paul Getty Museum, she’s turned her attention to Gustave Caillebotte, whom many museumgoers may know only by a single image—the monumental Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877). The painting, which depicts umbrella-toting citizens crisscrossing the metropolis’ slickened streets, entered the museum’s collection in 1964 and is usually prominently positioned at the top of the grand staircase off Michigan Avenue.

“What makes Caillebotte so fascinating is his insistence on a technique that is more realist than impressionist, but with an amazing and unexpected perspective, framing, and viewpoint, that sometimes puts us in the painting,” observes Groom, Chair and Mary Winton Green Curator Painting and Sculpture of Europe. “His best paintings tell stories and are, therefore, accessible. At the same time, the narrative remains open-ended, anti-descriptive, indeed ambiguous, all of which are characteristics of avant-garde painting at the time.”

The artist has been the subject of various explorations over the years, including 1994’s Gustave Caillebotte: The Urban Impressionist, organized by the Art Institute’s former director Douglas Druick, and the Musée d’Orsay. Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World, on view from June 29 through October 5, offers a fresh perspective on the artist by focusing on images he created of the people in his life, including portrayals of men. “Paul Perrin at the Musée d’Orsay had the idea that, given the artist’s predilection for painting men—70 percent of the works in his short career show men—and the absence of males as a prime subject during the two decades of high Impressionism, it was time to explore and celebrate this aspect of Caillebotte’s art and career,” explains Groom.

The exhibition showcases more than 120 pieces—ranging from paintings and works on paper to photographs and various ephemera—spanning Caillebotte’s entire career. These pieces reveal Caillebotte to be a multifaceted individual with diverse passions, an Impressionist painter with a unique style, who immortalized his own, distinct vision of Paris.

Groom, whom France has recognized by naming her an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters and Chevalier in the Legion of Honor, was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Languages were her first love. She began learning Spanish in elementary school and, as a teen, spent summers in Mexico and Venezuela. Along the way, she learned French through private lessons with a former member of the Resistance. “During my junior year abroad in Valencia, Spain,” she relates, “I discovered that the written and visual languages of a culture are intertwined and that provided me with the impetus to pursue art history. I wanted to be part of a larger system of communication than the academic environment provided, which is why I found my path in museums.”

Married to sculptor and author Joe Berton (T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt), Groom joined the staff of the Art Institute in 1985. Looking back over her career, she says, “The Art Institute has always encouraged exhibitions that expand on our knowledge of the collections, and of course, the Impressionist collections are very visible and accessible. Because of that, we try to dig deeper, to find different angles. For example, Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist was based on his work in clay, wood, and other materials. Manet and Modern Beauty explored the final years of the artist’s career, which are much less well-known and, for that reason, less popular.”

The figures depicted in Painting His World range from friends and family members to anonymous figures at work and play; from a top-hatted swell rowing a boat to a trio of laborers refinishing a floor. In a Café (1880) features a man with his hands in his pockets, looking a little worse for wear. Portrait of a Man (1880)

captures a well-dressed fellow gazing out a curtained window, sunlight streaming across his mustachioed face. Partie de Bésigue (1880) shows Caillebotte’s brother and his friend playing cards. While the artist painted many women—reading, engaged in needlework, lying naked on a divan—his images of men occupy a significant niche in his oeuvre, which was unusual for the art of his day. “Frédéric Bazille painted men, bathers,” notes Groom, “but he died in the Franco-Prussian War, before the artists who would become the Impressionists had organized around their ‘brand.’ Besides Caillebotte, Edgar Degas is the only artist who, in paintings such as Portraits à la Bourse (1879) and his portraits of musicians and family members, showed the modern male, but never to the extent that Caillebotte focused on the male in his incredibly compelling and modern works.”

For more information, visit artic.edu.