16 GUSTAVE CAILLEBOT TE Paris 14 – 194 Gennevilliers
Argenteuil, fête foraine
Signed and dated lower left: G Caillebotte / 1883 Oil on canvas: 26 x 32 in / 66 x 1.3 cm Frame size: 36 x 42 in / 91.4 x 106.6 in PROVENANCE:
Jules Froyez, Paris, probably acquired directly from the artist; his sale, Drouot Paris, 1th December 196, lot 6 Eugène Blot, Paris; his sale, Drouot Paris, 9th–10th May 1900, lot 11 Ambroise Vollard, Paris by descent for two generations in a Swiss private collection LITERATURE:
Marie Berhaut, La vie et l’oeuvre de Gustave Caillebotte, Paris 191, no.19 Marie Berhaut, Caillebotte, sa vie et son oeuvre, La Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris 197, p.16, no. 247, illus. Marie Berhaut, Caillebotte, sa vie et son oeuvre, Catalogue raisonné des peintures et pastels, Paris 1994, p.172, no.264, illus.
Born into a wealthy Normandy family, Gustave Caillebotte was a lynchpin of Impressionism, exhibiting with the group from 176 to 12. He inherited a fortune from his father in 174 and had no need to sell his paintings, but was a generous benefactor to fellow artists. Caillebotte amassed a superb group of Impressionist works which he bequeathed to the French nation in 194; today they form the core collection of the Musée d’Orsay. Because he had no need of promotion by a dealer such as Durand-Ruel, who spread the gospel of Monet and his circle, many of Caillebotte’s own paintings remained in the collection of his family and friends. It was not until the 1970s that his work attracted serious scholarly attention and he was revealed as one of the most innovative and original painters of the Impressionist group. Tiring of the squabbles among the Impressionists, in 11 Caillebotte bought a small estate at Petit-Gennevilliers near Argenteuil. There he indulged his passion for boating, took part in regattas and developed a beautiful garden which provided rich inspiration for his later works. This painting depicts the annual spring fair held on the promenade at Argenteuil between Ascension Day and Whitsun. Typically, Caillebotte does not show the throng of people in front of
the town hall, as Monet had done in 172 (private collection, USA)1, but a quiet, sun-lled street lined with owering horse chestnuts, depicted with his usual plunging recession and boldly geometric composition. The high-key palette and richly impasted brushwork, inuenced by the 10s paintings of his friend Monet, is characteristic of Caillebotte’s landscapes at this period. Argenteuil, fête foraine however also reveals Caillebotte’s deeply personal approach to his art. The colours and textures of the owering chestnuts are superbly evoked, yellow mixed with the emerald leaves to capture the exact appearance of exuberant spring growth. As always with Caillebotte, human beings are a subtle, rather mysterious presence, locked in their private worlds, their individualism subsumed in their surroundings. The man standing under the trees to the right is enveloped in the blue shadows of the ltering leaves, while the cart abandoned by the side of the road seems to be part of some unanswered narrative. There is a pensive quality about this backstreet, towards which music from the distant fairground drifts. This painting seems to have been acquired directly from the artist by his friend Jules Froyez. Caillebotte made two portraits of Froyez, circa 179 and in 11 (both in private collections)2. He lived in an apartment at 2 rue Laffitte, the viewpoint from which Caillebotte took one of his most successful Parisian views, Boulevard des Italiens, 10 (private collection, France)3.
1 Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, Nos. 1–96, Taschen/Wildenstein Institute, Cologne 1996, pp.10–6, no.241, illus. in colour. 2 Berhaut 1994, op. cit., nos.130 and 11. 3 Berhaut 1994, op. cit., no.144.