Conference on "Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), the bourgeois impressionist with a social vision"

On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the death of Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) and the exhibition “Gustave Caillebotte, Peindre les hommes”, organized by the Musée d'Orsay from October 2024 to January 2025, we will rediscover the life and career of this impressionist artist and patron, still little known to the general public. Or how a man, from a wealthy social class, was so interested in human nature and the work of the working classes, without forgetting the irrepressible need to represent modernity: that of Haussmannian buildings and booming Parisian neighborhoods, the banks of Argenteuil and the Seine, as well as boating and regatta races. You will thus learn more about this great impressionist painter, whose role as collector (of Monet, Pissarro, Degas, Renoir, Manet, etc.) and patron of these modern artists, has often erased his pictorial contribution to the movement, the major retrospective exhibitions having only taken place more than 100 years after his death, in 1994.

This lecture will be given as part of a series of lectures on art history, organized by the Médiathèque centre-ville d'Issy-les-Moulineaux, and may be given again in other places. You can contact me directly if you would like me to present this lecture in your city or institution.