Gustave Caillebotte (French painter) 1848 - 1894
Le Bassin d'Argenteuil, ca. 1882
oil on canvas
65.5 x 81.2 cm. (25.75 x 32 in.)
private collection
Catalogue Note Christie's
The Comité Caillebotte has confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
In 1881, having completely renounced any association with the Impressionist exhibitions, Caillebotte settled in Petit Gennevilliers, just across the Seine from Argenteuil. The preceding two years had been racked with frustration as the artists willing to exhibit in the annual Impressionist Salon fragmented due to internal strife, mostly centered around Degas and his loyalists. For years, Caillebotte had invested life and soul, as well as significant sums, into the Impressionist exhibitions and artists, but now retired to the suburban haven of Argenteuil.
Argenteuil was the perfect location for the Impressionist artists and had been made famous in the preceding decade by an influx of artists - Monet, Manet, Renoir and Boudin - who had painted extensively there. By the time Caillebotte truly established himself in Petit Gennevilliers, Argenteuil's popularity as a subject matter and a home for many other artists had passed. Indeed, Caillebotte had himself precipitated Monet's departure by renting him an apartment in Paris in 1877, closer to the art market and therefore, they hoped, to an income. Argenteuil was too far from Paris to be able to truly harness a market and sell paintings, and this distance was proving detrimental to Monet's success. Caillebotte moved out of Paris as a reaction to the same world Monet was embracing - he was fed up with the bickering between artists in Paris, and moved a safe distance away, renouncing the squabbles and scraps. Dissension among the Impressionists had been steadily growing for some time, with Degas introducing increasingly mediocre artists to the group while also denouncing Monet and Renoir for exhibiting at the Salon. Caillebotte felt that Renoir and Monet were the true backbone of Impressionism, and refused to allow the group to be compromised by their absence. However, in 1881, because they did not exhibit, neither did he. Indeed, Monet's continued association with the group had for some time been retained only through Caillebotte's diplomacy. After exhibiting several works in the 1882 Salon, which had been commandeered by the dealer Durand-Ruel for his own purposes, Caillebotte retired from the chaos of Parisian artistic life and focused instead on painting, gardening and sailing in Argenteuil. The distance that had denied Monet the financial success he deserved gave Caillebotte the space he needed.
Argenteuil's scenery itself was beautiful, but of particular interest to Caillebotte was it's mixture of landscape and technology, of pastoral idyll and modernity. The bridges and boats provided some remarkable feats of modern engineering, and so Argenteuil provided a perfect setting for the still shocking portrayal of the modern world within the context of the traditional genre of the landscape and rivers. Indeed, Caillebotte, who raced yachts with skill and success himself, designed many of the boats with which he won his races.
The subject matter of Le bassin d'Argenteuil; boats idle and sails furled on the river, combines both his interest in boats and his Impressionist roots by capturing a moment in its essence. The shimmering light and gentle ripples are perfectly captured here by Caillebotte. Unlike many of the other Impressionists, Caillebotte used a range of intense colors and light. Deep purples contrast with almost glaring whites to render the water's undulations, as light glances off the crests. Caillebotte's use of intense colors, even in tranquil landscapes like Le bassin d'Argenteuil, set him apart from other Impressionists who preferred more subdued tones in order to capture the effects of the light. It is through these contrasts that Caillebotte here truly attains impressionisme, imbuing the painting with a vibrancy and immediacy explicitly linked to the moment portrayed, manipulating both scientific and subjective ways of seeing to capture the essence of the scene.
Despite this use of stark contrast, Caillebotte's palette here shows the influence of his predecessors at Argenteuil. There is a lightness in Le bassin d'Argenteuil formerly absent from his works, not least in the simple addition of a great and luminous sky. In Le bassin d'Argenteuil, the sky takes up a large proportion of the canvas, giving the viewer a feeling of space and distance, an appreciation of the scale of the scene at hand. The deep purple utilized in the present work became a staple feature in many of Caillebotte's later works. The richness of color gives the scene vitality, while a strict adherence to Renaissance principles of geometry draw the viewer into the scene. The same engineering skills that Caillebotte used to design prize-winning yachts is here masterly applied. The foreground is presented at a dramatic slope, while the far bank appears horizontal, making the sense of distance impressive and abrupt and the viewer's interaction even more immediate.
Caillebotte's "engineering" in Le bassin d'Argenteuil is evidenced by his reliance upon the Golden Ratio. A division of the canvas has been created by the perpendicular mast, extended by its reflection in the water, of the second boat, which neatly divides the area to the left into a square. Caillebotte explored the effects of the parallel masts in a unique way, using them to enhance the sense of receding distance along the river. The bridge in the distance is an almost ironic apostrophe to the engineering of the composition. Unlike many of the other Impressionists, Caillebotte was meticulous in his preparation of every picture, making drawings, sometimes also taking photographs, and planning the lines, their convergences, and eventually transferring the scene from paper to canvas in a methodical, square by square technique. Caillebotte practiced Impressionism in a scientific manner.
Caillebotte's artistic career was cut short by his untimely death in 1894. He actively painted for only a few decades of his life. However, the later years spent at Petit Gennevilliers spurred a great emancipation in the evolution of his painting. Away from the limelight of the annual Impressionist exhibitions, Caillebotte could develop regardless of the increasingly stringent precepts of the Impressionist group. The distance he gained from their internal strife perhaps added to the lightness of feeling in Le bassin d'Argenteuil, as did his removal from the expectations of a circle of artists and critics.
In tone and sense of space, Monet's influence is palpable in the present work. Caillebotte owned a number of his friend's paintings, and the inventory of pictures he owned at his death included two Monets from the Argenteuil period, one of which was included in the famous Caillebotte bequest to the Louvre, now on view at the Musée d'Orsay. Caillebotte's ardent collecting meant that he had useful reference points and influences hanging on his walls, and nowhere is this more evident than in Le bassin d'Argenteuil.
* * *
Gustave Caillebotte was a member and patron of the group of artists known as Impressionists, though he painted in a much more realistic manner than many other artists in the group. Caillebotte was noted for his early interest in photography as an art form.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario