Gustave Caillebotte
Avenue of the Villa des Fleurs in Trouville, 1883
Not on view
7 further works by Caillebotte
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Oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm
Signed and dated lower left: G Caillebotte 1883
Inv.-no. MB-Cai-06
Even when he was on vacation, the painter remained a flaneur who recorded chance observations and meetings. Here he is approached by a black-clad cleaning woman who is carrying a basket with difficulty. She is moving away from the sea, which can be made out in the distance. The realistic portrayal of sunlight was indebted to the studies en plein air that Gustave Caillebotte had executed alongside Pierre-Auguste Renoir during the previous summer.
In many of his paintings of Trouville, Honfleur, and Villers-sur-Mer from the early 1880s, Gustave Caillebotte depicted the surroundings of the elegant villas where members of the wealthy Parisian upper class would lodge during the summer months. Unlike many of his Impressionist colleagues, Caillebotte could identify with this social class, since he came from a rich family and was financially independent. Along with his brother Martial, who was also an avid sailor, Caillebotte repeatedly spent extended holidays on the Normandy coast, where the two participated in regattas and moved in fashionable circles.
Caillebotte painted this work in 1883 and presented it as a wedding gift to his friend Edmond Badufle who, like Caillebotte and his brother, belonged to the exclusive sailing club Cercle de la Voile de Paris. With its fresh, glowing colors and impasto brushwork, the work shows stylistic parallels to the landscapes Caillebotte painted in the early 1880s near the Seine villages of Argenteuil and Le Petit-Gennevilliers. While the richly faceted play of light and shadow along the tree-lined road recalls works by Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the strong perspective and slight accentuation of the central visual axis are typical of Caillebotte’s dynamic approach to space. As in Couple on a Walk from two years earlier, here too Caillebotte uses glowing red accents to attract the viewer’s gaze in a composition otherwise dominated by green.
For many years this picture was unknown, and thus was not included in the catalogue raisonné of Caillebotte’s paintings compiled by Marie Berhaut and published in 1994. The authenticity of the work, which belonged to the private collection of Badufle and his heirs for over a hundred years, has been confirmed by the Comité Caillebotte.
Daniel Zamani
Impressionism: The Hasso Plattner Collection, Museum Barberini, Potsdam, from September 5, 2020
n.d., Edmond Badufle, France, gift
of the artist
n.d., Private collection, France, inherited from the above
2017, Private collection, Switzerland, acquired from the above
November 12, 2018, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 39, consigned by the above
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