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My Visit to VINCENT VAN GOGH’s Auvers-Sur-Oise, France. It was the last place the Post-Impressionist artist lived between May and July 1890 as he made paintings and drawings there that were his final enduring contribution to artistic modernism and where, at 37 years old, his life suddenly ended. (24 Photos & Images).

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FEATURE Image: Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), L’église d’Auvers-sur-Oise, vue du chevet (“The Church at Auvers”), June 1890, oil on canvas, 94 cm x 74 cm (37 in x 29.1 in), Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), staying in Auvers starting on May 20, 1890 liked the country town with its artistic pedigree (Corot, Daubigny, Cézanne) and spoke of settling into permanent quarters in the village after renting an attic room in a local café. The artist continued about his experience at Auvers as he wrote: “[C]es toiles vous diront ce que je ne sais dire en paroles, ce que je vois de sain et de fortifiant dans la campagne” (“[T]hese canvases will tell you what I can’t say in words, what I consider healthy and fortifying about the countryside.”) During his more than two months stay in Auvers, a small farm town about 20 miles west of Paris, the post-impressionist did more than 100 drawings and paintings of local landscapes, gardens, and village scenes such as this Catholic church. On the evening of July 27, 1890 Van Gogh had acquired a pistol and shot himself in the chest near the Auvers chateau. After languishing in pain for two days, he died on the morning of July 29, 1890. Vincent Van Gogh was 37 years old. Public Domain.

The graves of both Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) and his younger brother and Paris art dealer Theo Van Gogh (1857-1891). They have been side by side in the Auvers cemetery in France since 1914. Photo: Author’s collection. May 2005.

By John P. Walsh

In a peripatetic life, the last place where Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) lived was Auvers-sur-Oise, a small commune, a short distance northwest of Paris. Since Auvers was on a rail line in the orbit of Paris, Van Gogh moved to the small town with its farming community so he could live independently yet remain close to his art dealer younger brother Theo Van Gogh (1857-1891) who lived with his wife and family in the hustle and bustle of Paris. After leaving Saint-Paul Asylum, Saint-Rémy, where Van Gogh had admitted himself as a patient since May 1889, he traveled to the French capital in May 1890 where he visited Theo and Jo. He was then onwards to Auvers where, by arrangement of Theo, the artist was under the supervision of Dr. Paul Gachet (1828-1909), a mental health physician who was also an avid modern art collector and had his house, family and practice in the town. Vincent arrived to Auvers on May 20, 1890 and stayed in the Saint-Aubin hotel until he moved into a rented attic room in a café of Arthur Gustave Ravoux and his wife, Adeline Louise Touillet, who charged him three and a half francs per night for room and board. Located in Place de la Mairie, a 5-minute walk from the train station, the artist’s daily schedule involved rising at dawn and going outside to draw and paint.

Entrance to Vincent Van Gogh’s rented room in Ravoux’s inn in Auvers. It was here that the artist lived for two months as he made more than 100 drawings and paintings in the town. The room is where Van Gogh returned after he shot himself on July 27, 1890 and died two days later surrounded by family and friends. Author’s photograph, May 2005.

After roaming the town where he made friends of villagers, visited Dr. Gachet’s, and journeyed into nearby farm fields, Van Gogh returned to Ravoux’s café for lunch that was served at noon. In the afternoon he might sometimes work in the “painters’ room” at the inn or visit with other painters staying at the inn, such as compatriot Anton Matthias Hirschig (1867-1939) and Spanish painter Martinez de Valdivielse. These acquaintances proved more significant for history insofar as they provided eyewitness testimony of Van Gogh’s death and funeral. Following dinner at Ravoux’s, Van Gogh climbed the inn’s simple staircase to his single room in the center of the attic landing and retired at about nine in the evening.

Fields of Auvers. Author’s photograph, May 2005.
Vincent Van Gogh, View of Vessenots near Auvers, May 1890, oil on canvas, 55×65 cm, Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain. Public Domain.
Vincent Van Gogh, Daubigny’s Garden, 1890, oil on canvas, 56 cm × 101 cm (22 in × 39.8 in), Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland. There are three versions by Van Gogh of this Auvers garden of the late Barbizon artist Charles-François Daubigny (1817-1878) who had moved to Auvers in 1860. All three paintings by Van Gogh were made between May and July 1890. Daubigny, a landscape artist who painted en plein aire, died in 1878 and his widow still lived in the house in Auvers that was a short walk from Ravoux’s inn. Van Gogh stepped outdoors into Daubigny’s garden to look back towards the house for the painting’s subject (the Church of Auvers is distinctly drawn in the painting’s upper right corner). Since the 1870’s Van Gogh admired Daubigny and mentioned him with other Barbizon painters, Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) and Camille Corot (1796-1875) (see – https://www.vincentvangogh.org/garden-of-daubigny.jsp – retrieved March 11, 2024). Public Domain.
Vincent Van Gogh, Daubigny’s Garden, midJune 1890, oil on canvas, 51 cm x 51.2 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Other versions of Daubigny’s Garden are in the Hiroshima Museum of Art in Japan (see – https://www.hiroshima-museum.jp/en/collection/eu/vangogh.html – retrieved March 11, 2024) and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (see – https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0104V1962 – retrieved March 11, 2024.). The square-format flat decorative painting, painted on a simple tea towel that was mounted to canvas, became Van Gogh’s first painted attempt of the garden. It acts as a modernist talisman reminiscent of Paul Sérusier’s 1888 cigar box painting and looks ahead to the decorative landscapes of the Nabis in the 1890’s and of Gustave Klimt (1862-1918) 15 years later. Public Domain.
Vincent van Gogh, Garden in Auvers, July 1890, oil on canvas, 64×80 cm, private collection. Though Van Gogh died in 1890 his modernist artistic influence had deep ties with the European avant-garde art movement in the 1890’s and beyond. Public Domain.
Setting for, and approach to, the Church of Auvers hardly differs from the time of Van Gogh’s stay in the town in May to July 1890. Author’s photograph, May 2005.
Irises and other flowering plants on the side of an Auvers road that leads to Dr. Gachet’s house. Author’s photograph, May 2005.
Vincent Van Gogh, Still Life Pink Roses, June 1890, oil on canvas, 32 x 40.5 cm, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark. Public Domain.
Van Gogh, Dr. Gachet (second version), June 1890, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. As a token of friendship, Van Gogh painted two authenticated versions of Dr. Gachet’s portrait in June 1890 at Auvers. Reasons that Van Gogh came to Auvers included the role played by Dr. Gachet as the artist’s therapist, as well as that the well-regarded physician contributed to his town’s modern art pedigree. Dr. Gachet was himself an avid collector and painter and participated in art circles since the 1850’s with Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). Later, Dr. Gachet saw to it that Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) came to Auvers to paint in 1873. It was Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) living in nearby Pontoise who recommended Dr. Gachet to Theo Van Gogh in anticipation of Vincent’s arrival from Saint-Rémy. Vincent Van Gogh was completely enamored with the doctor and thought of him as a brother. When Dr. Gachet visited Theo in Paris in early July 1890, he told him he believed that Vincent was “completely recovered” and “that there need be no fears of a further attack” (quoted in Complete Paintings, p. 718). As Van Gogh found Dr. Gachet to be another brand of eccentric, he painted him in these portraits as a deep thinker who reflected a sensitive nature tending to slight melancholy. Public Domain.
Van Gogh, Portrait of Adeline Ravoux, June 1890, oil on canvas, 52x 52 cm, Cleveland Museum of Art. In their therapeutic and other conversations, it was Dr. Gachet in June 1890 who encouraged Van Gogh to make portraits of other sitters in Auvers. Van Gogh had done portraits of local Arlesiens in the “Studio of the South” in 1888 as well as many self-portraits. Adeline Ravoux was the 15-year-old daughter of his Auvers innkeepers, the Ravoux’s. About one month after this portrait was made, the girl was with her parents to witness Vincent’s return to the café after he shot himself. She wrote later in a memoir: “Vincent walked bent, holding his stomach, again exaggerating his habit of holding one shoulder higher than the other. Mother asked him: “M. Vincent, we were anxious, we are happy to see you to return; have you had a problem?” He replied in a suffering voice: “No, but I have…” He did not finish, crossed the hall, took the staircase and climbed to his bedroom.” (see –  http://www.vggallery.com/misc/archives/a_ravoux.htm – retrieved March 11, 2024). Public Domain.
Van Gogh, Young Girl Standing Against Wheat, late June 1890, 66.7 x 45.8 cm (26 1/4 x 18 1/16 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The painting’s lack of horizon creates a flat wall behind the sitter who appears in close proximity to the picture plane as she fills the pictorial space. Van Gogh shadowed her face under her hat and gave her a “distant, unfocused” gaze, all of which works to give the portrait emotional distance. (see – Painting the Difference: Sex and Spectator in Modern Art by Charles Harrison, University of Chicago Press, 2006). Public Domain.
Van Gogh, Marguerite Gachet at the Piano, June 1890, chalk on paper, 30.5 cm x 23.8 cm, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Marguerite Gachet was the daughter of Dr. Gachet. At the time of this drawing which resulted in a similarly composed painting, the sitter had recently turned 21 years old. In anticipation of the painting that is today in the Kunstmuseum Basel, Van Gogh made two sketches in late June 1890 of which this is one. https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/d0427V1962r – retrieved March 11, 2024.  Public Domain.
As in Van Gogh’s 1890 painting of the same subject, the church at Auvers (“Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption”) today is brightly lit in the sun, while the church itself sits in its own shadow. Author’s photograph, May 2005.
Van Gogh, L’église d’Auvers-sur-Oise, vue du chevet (“The Church at Auvers”), June 1890, oil on canvas, 94 cm x 74 cm (37 in x 29.1 in), Musée d’Orsay. Public Domain.

Van Gogh proved quite productive in Auvers, painting several notable canvasses in and around the town and countryside, particularly landscapes and other outdoor subjects en plein aire. In these two months, the painter produced 74 paintings and 33 drawings, including the portraits of Dr. Gachet and Adeline Ravoux, The Church of Auvers, and Field of Wheat with Crows. In a letter of around July 10, 1890, Van Gogh wrote to Theo and Jo that he painted three large canvases at Auvers since visiting them in Paris on July 6, 1890. During that visit the artist also met with Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) and art critic Gabriel-Albert Aurier (1865-1892). In addition to Daubigny’s Garden, these large canvasses likely included Wheatfield with Crows and Wheatfields Thunderclouds (both Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam). Van Gogh described them as “immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies…searching to express sadness [and] extreme loneliness” (“immenses étendues de blés sous des ciels troublés… chercher à exprimer de la tristesse, de la solitude extreme”). See – https://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let898/print.html – retrieved March 11, 2024.

Vincent Van Gogh, Sorrowing Old Man (“At Eternity’s Gate”), 1890, 80 cm × 64 cm (31.5 in × 21.2 in), oil on canvas, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands. The painting was completed at St. Rémy shortly before Van Gogh moved to Auvers-sur-Oise. 
At the wheatfield in Auvers where Van Gogh painted “Wheatfield with Crows,” one of his last paintings, in July 1890. Author’s photograph, May 2005.
Van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows. July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.2 cm × 103 cm (19.8 in × 41 in), Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Public Domain. Many have claimed this to be Van Gogh’s last painting.
Auvers fields. Author’s photograph, May 2005.

Van Gogh, Wheatfield Thunderclouds, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.4 cm × 101.3 cm (19.8 in × 39.9 in), Vincent Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

On July 27, 1890, Vincent, as he did each day, went into the fields to paint. Though the artist appeared to be in good spirits, the artist shot himself later that day near the chateau after going for a walk towards evening. Though able to walk the 10 minutes back mortally wounded to Ravoux’s inn, he told them nothing upon entering the café. The Ravoux’s, sensing something was wrong, called for Mazery, the village doctor and Dr. Gachet. Though these doctors bandage the wound, Van Gogh’s condition is inoperable. In the hot attic room, Van Gogh suffered into the next day, when Theo was sent for. He arrived immediately on July 28 from Paris to be by his brother’s side. Van Gogh died the next morning of July 29, 1890. This suicide sent ripples of shock through the village, as some townspeople had witnessed these events. During my visit to Auvers in May 2005, after exiting Van Gogh’s room where he died, I told the innkeeper that the story was sad (“c’est triste”). She countered, “C’est emouvante” (“It’s moving”). Vincent was buried the next day, July 30, 1890, in Auvers’ new graveyard. His funeral was attended by Theo, Dr. Gachet, the Ravoux’s, assorted villagers, and friends from Paris. These last included artists Emile Bernard (1868-1941), Charles Laval (1862-1894), and Lucien Pissarro (1863- 1944), Camille Pissarro’s son. Petit boulevard art dealer and art materials supplier Julien (Père) Tanguy (1825-1894) was also in attendance. Van Gogh’s casket was strewn with yellow dahlias and sunflowers and Dr. Gachet gave remarks as did Theo Van Gogh. Later, in a letter to his wife, Theo wrote about the proceedings: “[Vincent] was buried in a sunny spot among the cornfields, and the cemetery does not have that unpleasant character of Parisian cemeteries.” (see- Kort geluk, 1999, p. 281). The mortal remains of Van Gogh were transported to the cemetery by a rented hearse from the next town because Auvers’ Catholic priest would not allow the community’s hearse to be used. A proposed church service was also cancelled. The homiletics were left to Dr. Gachet who said: “Vincent was an honest man and a great artist, and there were only two things for him – humanity and art. Art mattered to Vincent Van Gogh more than anything else and he will live on through it” (quoted in Complete Paintings, p. 719).

Graves of Vincent and Theo Van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, France. Author’s photograph, May 2005.

Three days after the funeral, Emile Bernard wrote to Aurier about “our dear friend Vincent.” Aurier had written in January 1890 about the intense fixity of Van Gogh’s art. The art critic conjectured that it may be the catalyst for change in French art. In his essay entitled Les Isolés: Vincent van Gogh published in Mercure de France, Aurier prophesied for an artist-savior figure: “A man must come, a Messiah, a sower of Truth, to rejuvenate our geriatric art, indeed perhaps the whole of our geriatric, feeble minded, industrial society” (quoted in Complete Paintings, p. 698). Van Gogh, aware of these statements, did not think he was Aurier’s man. On August 2, 1890 Emile Bernard wrote to Aurier: “On Sunday evening [Vincent] went out into the countryside near Auvers, placed his easel against a haystack and went behind the chateau and fired a revolver shot at himself. Under the violence of the impact (the bullet entered his body below the heart) he fell, but he got up again, and fell three times more, before he got back to the inn where he was staying (Ravoux, place de la Mairie) without telling anyone about his injury. He finally died on Monday evening, still smoking his pipe which he refused to let go of, explaining that his suicide had been absolutely deliberate and that he had done it in complete lucidity…. On the walls of the room where his body was laid out all his last canvases were hung making a sort of halo for him and the brilliance of the genius that radiated from them made this death even more painful for us artists who were there. The coffin was covered with a simple white cloth and surrounded with masses of flowers, the sunflowers that he loved so much, yellow dahlias, yellow flowers everywhere. It was, you will remember, his favorite color, the symbol of the light that he dreamed of as being in people’s hearts as well as in works of art….The sun was terribly hot outside. We climbed the hill outside Auvers talking about him, about the daring impulse he had given to art, of the great projects he was always thinking about, and of the good he had done to all of us. We reached the cemetery, a small new cemetery strewn with new tombstones. It is on the little hill above the fields that were ripe for harvest under the wide blue sky that he would still have loved…perhaps.Then he was lowered into the grave…Then we returned. Theodore Van Ghog [sic] was broken with grief; everyone who attended was very moved, some going off into the open country while others went back to the station…” (see – https://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/21/etc-Bernard-Aurier.htm – retrieved March 11, 2024.)

Van Gogh, Two Women Crossing the Fields, July 1890, oil on paper on canvas, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas.

By contrast, Anton Hirschig, the Dutch artist who roomed next door to Van Gogh at Ravoux’s, wrote a letter much later, in 1911, to Albert Plasschaert (1874-1941) in which he recounted a more terrible scene following Van Gogh’s shooting himself. Hirschig wrote: “He lay in his attic room under a tin roof. It was terribly hot. It was August. He stayed there alone for some days. Perhaps only a few. Perhaps many. It seemed to me like a lot. At night he cried out, cried out loud. His bed stood just beside the partition of the other attic room where I slept: Isn’t there anyone willing to open me up! I don’t think there was anyone with him in the middle of the night and it was so hot. I don’t think I ever saw any other doctor like his friend the retired army doctor: It’s your own fault, what did you have to go kill yourself for? He didn’t have any instruments this doctor. He lay there until he died.”

Theo Van Gogh died in Holland on January 25, 1891, nearly 6 months to the day after Vincent’s death. Theo was buried in Holland but exhumed and reinterred next to his older brother Vincent’s grave in Auvers cemetery in 1914. While Vincent Van Gogh, the man, was never larger than life, as an artist he produced an explosion of life on paper and canvas. Van Gogh came to art late (30 years old in 1883) and produced incessantly for the next 7 years. His oeuvre was beautifully powerful, and none of it more remarkably for the future of modernism than that done in Auvers-sur-Oise in May to July 1890.

SOURCES –

Ingo F. Walther/Painer Metzger, Vincent Van Gogh The Complete Paintings, Benedikt Taschen, 1996.

Charles Harrison, Painting the Difference: Sex and Spectator in Modern Art, University of Chicago Press, 2006.

https://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/21/etc-Bernard-Aurier.htm – retrieved March 8, 2024

https://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/agenda/expositions/van-gogh-auvers-sur-oise – retrieved March 8, 2024.

https://vangoghroute.com/france/auvers-sur-oise/ https://vangoghroute.com/france/auvers-sur-oise/cemetery/ – retrieved March 8, 2024.

https://vangoghletters.org/vg/bibliography.html – retrieved March 8, 2024.

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/nl?page=3263&collection=451&lang=en – retrieved March 10, 2024.

https://www.vincentvangogh.org/portrait-of-dr-gachet.jsp – retrieved March 10, 2024.

http://www.vggallery.com/misc/archives/a_ravoux.htm – retrieved Match 11, 2024.

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/d0427V1962r – retrieved March 11, 2024

Van Gogh, View of Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 34 x 42.1 cm (13 3/8 x 16 9/16 inches), Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. See – https://risdmuseum.org/art-design/collection/view-auvers-sur-oise-35770?return=%2Fart-design%2Fcollection%3Fsearch_api_fulltext%3Dvan%2Bgogh%26op%3D#content__section–description–1567076 – retrieved March 11, 2024.

PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903) and the creation of Oviri (Savage), the Symbolist artist’s mysterious she-wolf figure exhibited in Paris in 1895.

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FEATURE image: Paul Gauguin, Oviri (Savage),1894, stone, 75 x 19 x 27 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Public Domain.

By John P. Walsh

By 1887 French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) had created over 50 ceramic sculptures and carved several decorative panels. So it may be expected that during his interlude in Paris between 1893 and 1895 that he would create a woodcut based on his most recent and important discovery of this Paris interval—the hideous Oviri.

Gauguin made a large ceramic of Oviri (fig. 13) in the winter of 1894-1895. The Tahitian name translates as “wild” or “savage” and, a more recent interpretation, “turned into oneself.” The artist submitted it to the annual exhibition of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts for April 1895.

#4 Oviri Savage
fig.12. Paul Gauguin, Oviri (Savage), 1894 – woodcut printed in black on cream Japan laid paper, 8.03 x 4.56 inches (204 x 116 mm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Clarence Buckingham Collection.

Submitted, Rejected, Overridden

The ceramic, envisioned by the artist as a modern, savage funerary monument (fig.14), was rejected by the judges for inclusion into the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Gauguin’s latest Tahiti-inspired art was deemed too ugly even by an organization of artists that, since its renewed inception in 1890, is seen as Europe’s first Secessionist movement. Although Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was a founding member of the group and since 1891 working on his commission from the Société de Gens Lettres for a Paris Balzac statue (that “obese monstrosity”), it was ceramist Ernst Chaplet who insisted on Gauguin’s admittance.56

When Gauguin discovered this mysterious figure who holds a blunted she-wolf, crushing the life out of her cub — occasionally understood as a symbol of female sexual potency — he did not let her go.55 In the print impression — and he made 19 prints from the same wood block, none of which are exactly alike — Gauguin’s Oviri is encountered in the primeval forest as inky blackness.

CHAPLET Paul Marsan, dit DORNAC (1858-1941)
Paul Marsan, called Dornac (1858-1941), photograph of Ernest Chaplet (Sèvres, 1836 – Choisy-le-Roi, 1909), octobre 21, 1904.
1024px-Oviri_on_the_Tomb_of_Gauguin
fig. 14. Bronze Oviri on the grave of Paul Gauguin on the Marquesan island of Hiva Oa.

Where exactly the ceramic Oviri was displayed in the salon is unclear, but its subsequent route into the collection of the Musée d’Orsay in 1987 is highly circuitous.57 Gauguin often exploited favorite images by repeating them in various media — and the ceramic transposed to the print depicts his idol showering a black light that blots out most of the natural reality around her.

In another Gauguin print from the time period that can fit in the palm of the hand, the artist offers a splendor of darkness, the mystery of a palm frond forest, and a stark confrontation with Oviri who is, as Gauguin described to Stéphane Mallarmé on the poet’s version of the print, “a strange figure, cruel enigma.”58

Les sculptures de Monsieur Rodin au Salon
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1898.

NOTES:

  1. “turned into oneself” – Anne Pingeot, “Oviri,” in Gauguin Tahiti, George T.M. Shackelford and Claire Frèches-Thory, MFA Publications, 2004, p. 140; “symbol of female sexual potency” – Mathews, p. 203; Gauguin’s ceramic and carved panel output -Barbara Stern Shapiro, “Shapes and Harmonies of Another World,” in Gauguin Tahiti, George T.M. Shackelford and Claire Frèches-Thory, MFA Publications, 2004, pp. 117 and 126.
  2. 19 prints from one wood block – Shapiro, p. 126; savage, modern funerary monument – Mathews, p.208; first secessionist movement – Hans-Ulrich Simon, Sezessionismus. Kunstgewerbe in literarischer und bildender Kunst,: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart ,1976, p. 47; Gauguin and the 1895 Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts salon – Mathews, p. 208; “obese monstrosity” – Grunfeld, Frederic V., Rodin:A Biography, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1987, p. 374.
  3. Anne Pingeot, “Oviri,” in Gauguin Tahiti, George T.M. Shackelford and Claire Frèches-Thory, MFA Publications, 2004, pp. 136-138.
  4. Quoted in Shapiro, Gauguin Tahiti, p. 128.
https://www.academia.edu/12845381/Savagery_in_Civilization_Paul_Gauguin_and_his_Tahiti-inspired_graphic_work_in_Paris_1893-1895
PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903): 3 monotypes produced in Paris, 1893-1895, inspired by Tahiti – Tahitians Fishing; Tahitian Landscape; Tahitian Idol-The Goddess Hina.
Savagery In Civilization: PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903) and his Tahiti-inspired graphic art In Paris, 1893-1895.

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE (1848-1894): The “Tricky Business” of the Caillebotte Bequest.

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FEATURE image: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Swing, 1876, oil on canvas, 36 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: L’Estaque, c. 1878/9, oil on canvas, 23 1/4 x 28 3/4 inches, Paul Cézanne. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

By John P. Walsh

Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) exhibited together in the Second Impressionist Exhibition in 1876 and became lifelong friends. Just two years later, in 1878, Caillebotte appointed Renoir to be executor of his will. Now in the wake of Caillebotte’s death in 1894, Renoir and Martial Caillebotte (1853-1910), the artist’s younger brother, were resolved to carry out Caillebotte’s final wishes to the letter. The most important charge given to Caillebotte’s advocates was to persuade the French State to accept their late friend’s collection of Impressionist art that came to be known as the “Caillebotte Bequest.” These 68 paintings were the wealthy artist’s assemblage of prime Impressionist art which today provides a glittering foundation for museum collections around the world, especially the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. An exact count of the bequest varies whether based on the inventories by the estate in 1894, by art writer Gustave Geffroy (1855-1926) also in 1894 or by Renoir, Martial Caillebotte and Léonce Bénédite (1859-1925) in 1896.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919) at Montmartre in a photograph by Martial Caillebotte around 1885.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919) at Montmartre in a photograph by Martial Caillebotte around 1885.
Martial Caillebotte (1853–1910), photographer and composer, with brother Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), artist, collector and arts organizer.
Martial Caillebotte (1853–1910), photographer and composer, with brother Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), artist, collector and arts organizer.
Gustave Geffroy (1855-1926) in a portrait photograph by Nadar.
Gustave Geffroy (1855-1926) in a portrait photograph by Nadar.
Léonce Bénédite (1856 - 1925), at left, curator for the Caillebotte Bequest.
Léonce Bénédite (1856 – 1925), at left, curator for the Caillebotte Bequest.

In 1894 Caillebotte’s bequest included paintings by living artists such as Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Two artists in the collection were already dead – and both Jean Millet (1814-1875) and Édouard Manet (1832-1883) were more highly prized than the others at the time. A vast majority of Caillebotte’s more than five dozen paintings were painted and purchased before 1880.

CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Edouard Manet, The Balcony, 1868-69, oil on canvas, 67 3/4 x 40 1/4 inches,  Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

The French government was accustomed to selecting and purchasing works for the national collection on their own initiative and looked on Caillebotte’s donation as a “tricky business” as expressed by Republican Henry Roujon, Fine Arts administrator who had only recently worked for Jules Ferry. From a wanting-to-oblige Establishment viewpoint the bequest was complicated because Caillebotte boldly stipulated that all 68 works be accepted together and earmarked as a group for entrance into the Louvre. Up to now the French State only had experience in purchasing Sisley and Renoir (“Young Girls at the Piano,” acquired in 1892) for the national collection. Moreover the acceptance of Caillebotte’s collection would change State policy to exhibit no more than three works by any artist for Caillebotte’s bequest included more paintings than that number for each artist. Although twenty years had passed since the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874, the French State had never taken much of a public interest in this diverse group of nonacademic artists.  On the other side of the table as Renoir and Martial Caillebotte were primarily concerned with the State’s acceptance of the entire body of work, those living artists in the bequested collection had their concerns if they succeeded.

Henry Roujon (French, 1853-1914).
Henry Roujon (French, 1853-1914) in 1912.

One antidote to this attitude of entrenchment was that the Republican French state in 1894 was halfway into its second decade of shepherding progressive policies onto France and its cultural leaders realized this must extend to a determined national support for this windfall of abstruse avant-garde artists. Following a year of negotiation with executors Renoir and the younger Caillebotte the State cut its deal. They might have refused the whole lot of them, but accepted a majority of the bequest and more than one painting of each artist. Further they formally agreed to exhibit all 40 works and they were duly hung in the Musée du Luxembourg in February 1897. In addition to two by Millet, these 38 Impressionist masterworks are today in the Musée D’Orsay. None of Caillebotte’s own paintings were included in the legacy. Protests by traditional art voices were now useless: the Impressionists,  accused of “ruining young artists,” were now on national museum walls. Cézanne’s response to the inclusion of two of his paintings is forthright: “Now (William-Adolphe) Bouguereau can go to hell!” During this hard-edged contest to determine which artists and art works were included or excluded, it was not the museums that picked up the pieces but the mainly French and American collectors as well as the gallery dealers who mounted historic one-man shows for Caillebotte (at Durand-Ruel in June 1894), for Cézanne (at Ambroise Vollard in 1895) and for Monet (Durand-Ruel in May 1895).

CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Claude Monet, Luncheon in the Garden, 1873-74, oil on canvas, 63 x 79 1/8 inches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Girl Reading, c. 1874, oil on canvas, 18 1/8 x 15 inches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Railroad Bridge at Chatou, 1881, oil on canvas, 21 1/4 x 25 1/2 inches. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Study (Nude in the sunlight), 1875, oil on canvas, 31 7/8 x 25 1/2 inches. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Swing, 1876, oil on canvas, 36 1/2 x 28 1/2 inches. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Edgar Degas, Women on the Terrace of a cafe in the Evening, 1877, pastel over monotype, 16 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Edgar Degas, The Chorus,1876/77, pastel over monotype, 10 5/8 x12 1/4 inches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Edgar Degas, L’Etoile (the Star), 1876/77, pastel over monotype, 22 7/8 x 16 1/2 inches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Edgar Degas, Femme sortant du bain, vers 1876, pastel sur monotype, H. 0.16 ; L. 0.215, musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.
CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Camille Pissarro, Red Roofs, Village scene, Winter Effect, 1877, oil on canvas, 21 1/2 x 15 1/4 inches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Camille Pissarro, Harvest at Montfoucault, 1876, oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 36 1/4 inches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Camille Pissarro, The Vegetable Garden with Trees in Blossom, Spring, Pontoise, 1877, Oil on canvas, 25 1/2 x 31 7/8 inches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Regatta at Argenteuil
CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Claude Monet, Regattas at Argenteuil, c. 1872, oil on canvas, 17 3/4 x 29 1/2 inches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Alfred Sisley, Boat Races at Molesey, 1874, oil on canvas, 26 x 35 3/4 inches, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Claude Monet, The Church at Vétheuil, Snow, 1878-79, oil on canvas, 20 1/2 x 28 in., Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
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CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Auguste Renoir, Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, 1876, Oil on canvas, H. 131; W. 175 cm © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Jean-Gilles Berizzi

The settlement accepted in January 1895 and promulgated a year later was not the last word for Renoir who continued to try to fully achieve his friend’s terms. On at least two occasions – in 1904 and 1908 –  the works refused by the State in 1894 were proffered to them. Both times these 28 remaining works were refused and as far as the French State was concerned the case of the Caillebotte Bequest was closed. Only by his death in 1919 were Renoir’s efforts to honor Caillebotte’s bequest to France halted (Martial had died in 1910). In 1928, over thirty years after Caillebotte’s death and bequest, the French State dared to make a legal claim to those remaining 28 works they had rejected three times previously. Inexorably cloaked in superiority, this latest endeavor of the official art establishment revealed its opportunism as the changing winds of taste now clearly favored Impressionism. Both original executors of Caillbotte’s bequest now dead, it was left to Martial Caillebotte’s son’s widow to respond to these highly-placed administrative scratchings. Her decision: she refused to hand over these works and placed them on the open market. The “rejected” and overlooked works of the “Caillebotte Bequest” were sold to private collectors all over the world, including to Americans Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951), and H.O. Havemeyer (1847-1907) and Louisine Havemeyer (1855-1929). Many of these remainder works’ locations are unknown.

Baigneurs au repos BAthers at rest Barnes 1876 7 oil on canvas
CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Bathers at rest, (Baigneurs au repos), 1876/77, oil on canvas, 32 5/16 x 39 7/8 inches, Paul Cézanne. The Barnes Foundation.
CAILLEBOTTE BEQUEST: Edgar Degas, The Dance Lesson, c. 1879, pastel and black chalk on three pieces of wove paper, 25 3/8 x 22 1/8/inches, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.

SOURCES: Anne Distel, Impressionism: the First Collectors, Abrams, 1990; Anne Distel, Douglas W. Druick, Gloria Groom, Rodolphe Rapetti and Kirk Varnedoe, Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist, 1995; http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/history-of-the-collections/painting.html; http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/312.html?page=2

GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE (1848-1894) and the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Impressionist Art Exhibitions in Paris, 1879-1882.

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FEATURE image: P.A.-Renoir, A Luncheon at Bougival, 1881, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition – 1882.

Gustave Caillebotte, The Bezique Game (Partie de bésigue), 1880, private collection. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition-1882.

By John P. Walsh

In the five years between the “balanced and coherent” Third Impressionist Art Exhibition in April 1877 and the penultimate Seventh Impressionist Art Exhibition in March 1882 which included Gustave Caillebotte’s The Bezique Game, significant changes had occurred in the art world.

One major development that was especially impactful for the band of independent and ever-varying avant-garde artists known as the “impressionists” was that, after 1877, the group had fallen apart.

The Third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877 organized by Caillebotte and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) demonstrated the benefit of a detailed marketing plan within a professional arts organization. Caillebotte’s attempted follow-up to host an impressionist exhibition in 1878, however, failed to get off the ground.

It wasn’t for any lack of his trying. In 1877, Caillebotte could measure success in the Third show by 18-count modern artists under a new brand name, along with 230 works. Show attendance numbers were up from the first and second exhibitions almost four fold. Picture sales were up.

In less than one year, the enterprise devolved to nothing tangible. This was because of a lack of collective coherence among the artists in terms of artistic and business outlook. Seeds of destruction among this klatch of mostly young, avant-garde artists became increasingly evident during the “glorious” 1877 show.

Caillebotte’s genius in the Third Exhibition was to know strengths to promote and problem to ignore. He avoided the veritable train wreck coming from associated artists who were antagonistic creatively by keeping them mostly literally physically apart. 

The Impressionists had two major factions. One was led by classically-trained Edgar Degas (1834-1917) with his realist urban figure drawing. The other was the nonacademic, “broken-brush” innovators or strict impressionists such as Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) who explored the effects of light.

For the duration of the Third Impressionist exhibition, all of Degas’s 25 beach and ballet works hung in a room of their own. 

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 EDGAR DEGAS (1834 – 1917).
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CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926).
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GUSTAVE CAILLEBOTTE (1848-1894).

As a business seeks popular and financial success, a caveat towards that objective for the third and upcoming 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th impressionist art shows was “the terrible Monsieur Degas.”

Although Degas had an argumentative personality, major reasons for Degas’s dispute with Caillebotte’s impresionist show were not Degas’ making. After 1877, the battle line which ensued between Degas and his group of trained artists and Monet and his nonacademic group affected every next impressionist show up to the 8th and last one in 1886.

The catalyst for the Impressionists’ artistic divisions was their different understandings of what became another major development to affect the art world and all contemporary artists.

Throughout the 1860s, the Salon continued to be anti-democratic. By the late 1870s, there was a clear trend towards a more liberalized Salon. In 1881, the French government took itself out of the Salon. Even before that, in 1878, the year of the scrapped 4th Impressionist show, the government allowed strict or “broken brush” Impressionists like Monet and Renoir to participate in their “Exhibition of Living Artists.”

Édouard Dantan, Un Coin du Salon en 1880 (A Corner of the Salon in 1880), 1880, oil on canvas, 97.2 x 130.2 cm (38.2 x 51.2 in.). Private collection.

Biggest art show in Paris.

Whatever its drawbacks, the Salon remained the biggest art show in Paris.

While Caillebotte’s Third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877 attracted 15,000 visitors in its one month run—a remarkable statistic—the Salon attracted 23,000 visitors per day.

The Salon displayed around 23x more art than the Impressionist show and attracted 50x more visitors. Opportunities for sales and new clients at one of these nineteenth-century warehouse events was immense.

In 1878, after years of fighting for greater participation in the Salon— the Salon des Refusés took place in 1863—innovative Impressionists were finally allowed to freely hang their artwork in an annual show that for hundreds of years had been the institurional enclave of the Paris art world’s elite.

Yet, In terms of the 4th impressionist art show, the bourgeois Degas devised an ingeniously small-minded idea that he presented ennobled by some principle.

Despite this historic opening of the Salon to young avant-garde artists—Monet and Renoir were in their late 30’s, Degas in his mid 40’s—the older and financially secure artist insisted that all impressionists must make a choice.

Either exhibit in the Salon or with the Impressionists.

Degas’s ultimatum was crafted to pressure the “broken brush” impressionists such as Renoir, Monet, Sisley and Cézanne to break ranks to the Salon—and likely improve their sales and reputations in a rapidly changing art market—and leave the impressionist art organization to Degas and his followers.

Degas’s wedge actually worked. By 1880, the “broken brush” impressionists were purged from the Impressionist exhibitions by their own choice to exhibit in the Salon. Though they saw no conflict with the Impressionist art organization per se that broken brush artists helped found, Degas’s ultimatum had been permitted to stand for the 4th, 5th, and 6th impressionist art shows and helped secure these Impressionist shows of 1879, 1880, and 1881 under the leadership of Degas.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919).
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French, 1841-1919).
Paul Cézanne (French 1839-1906) and Camille Pissarro (French, 1830-1903).
Paul Cézanne (French 1839-1906) and Camille Pissarro (French, 1830-1903).
Alfred Sisley (British, born France, 1839-1899).
Alfred Sisley (British, born France, 1839-1899).

The 4th, 5th, and 6th exhibitions featured Degas and his favorite artists. It was in these Degas-led shows that the public had their first in-depth look at Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), among others.

Not all of the Impressionists’ original members and strict impressionists decided to exhibit in the Salon. Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) chose to stay in the independent art group and continued doing so for the eight shows. (Morisot had a baby during the 4th and didn’t participate).

Gustave Caillebotte had invested his talent, reputation and resources into the independents since 1876 and continued to organize and exhibit with them in 1879 and 1880. Before the 6th show in 1881, Caillebotte himself finally broke with the Degas regime in a dispute nominally over a advertising issue.

As the calendar proclaimed a new decade, new opportunities for Impressionist exhibitions began percolating in Caillebotte’s head as he painted The Bezique Game (1880) within the shifting artistic environment.

Mary Cassatt (American, 1844 –1926) in later years.
Mary Cassatt (American, 1844 –1926) in later years.
Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883).
Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883).
Berthe Morisot (French, 1841-1895) in 1875.
Berthe Morisot (French, 1841-1895) in 1875.

Card games

The game of Bezique is a 64-card game for two players and curiously French. In the game two singles players sit across the net to compete to 1000 points. The rest are score keepers or observers. As the game carries on, card “tricks” pile up on the table.

Some art critics viewing Caillebotte’s contemporary subject of a popular game identified the painting as a “legible and tightly ordered” image out of the long-held pictorial tradition of card playing. Yet idiomatic clichés related to card playing such as “playing one’s cards right” or “holding one’s cards close to the chest” may be read into the painting. It is one of the canvasses painted by impressionist artists during this time that relate to the Impressionist group’s recent and ongoing exhibition experiences.

Nineteenth-century art critics usually grouped together the artwork of Caillebotte and Degas, Neither artist was among the “strict” impressionists such as of Monet and Renoir. Several critics wondered aloud in the newspaper why Caillebotte would even have dealings with those “broken-brush” daubers now at the Salon with Édouard Manet.

4th (1879):

Competition between Degas’s partisans and the mostly younger strict impressionists such as Claude Monet, Renoir, and others, resulted in a schism in 1879. In addition to himself, Degas recruited talented newcomers such as Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Jean-Louis Forain (1852-1931), and Federico Zandomeneghi (1841-1917) for the 4th.

Edgar Degas, Chevaux de course (Jockeys before the Race), 1869-1872, oil, essence, pastel on paper, 107 x 73 cm, 42 1/8 x 28 3/4 in., The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham. The Fourth Impressionist Exhibition-1879.
Gustave Caillebotte, The Skiffs, 1877, oil on canvas, 88.9 x 116.2 cm (35 x 45 3/4 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The Fourth Impressionist Exhibition-1879.
Mary Cassatt, Femme dans une loge (Woman in a Loge), 1879, oil on canvas, 80.3 x 58.4 cm (31 5/8 x 23 in.), Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Fourth Impressionist Exhibition-1879.
Edgar Degas, Miss Lola, au Cirque Fernando, 1879, oil on canvas, 117 x 77.5 cm ( 46 x 30 1/2 in.), National Gallery, London. The Fourth Impressionist Exhibition-1879.
Claude Monet, Jardin à Sainte-Adresse (Garden at Sainte-Adresse), 1867, oil on canvas, 38 5/8 x 51 1/8 in. (98.1 X 129.9 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Fourth Impressionist Exhibition-1879.
Jean-Louis Forain, Café Interior, c.1879, gouache on paper, 12 7/8 x 10 in. (32.8 x 25.5 cm). The Fourth Impressionist Exhibition-1879.
Federico Zandomeneghi, Portrait of M. Diego Martelli, 1879, oil of canvas, 28 3/8 x 36 1/4 in. (72 x 92 cm), Galleria D’Arte Moderna, Florence. The Fourth Impressionist Exhibition-1879.

The Third Impressionist Art Exhibition held in April 1877 is known as “Caillebotte’s Exhibition.” It is the highlight of the eight Impressionist exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886. While scholars agree that the Third Impressionist Exhibition was in every sense “glorious,” the show’s euphoria was short lived. Two weeks after the show closed, as hope for picture sales grew high, there was a Constitutional crisis in the French government. The political turmoil resulted in a consolidation of Republican power defeating Royalists which led to a national economic recession. The Impressionist group, conceived and carefully built to unity by Gustave Caillebotte, resorted to squabbling as the artists jostled to survive in receding good times.

Gustave Caillebotte’s efforts for a fourth impressionist exhibition in 1878 were stymied and the next 3 exhibitions would be under Degas’s rule. In 1879 Degas exclude the “broken brish” artists Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne and Alfred Sisley. In 1880, Degas cast out Claude Monet. The destructive outcome of these intramural politics was not lost on Caillebotte. 

Caillebotte built the group’s brand in the Third Impressionist Art Exhibition in 1877 largely on  “broken brush” impressionists nwho were excluded from Degas’s shows. Caillebotte, however, worked with Edgar Degas and his artistic coterie in 1879, 1880 and 1881. Oy was before the opening of the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in 1881 that Caillebotte finally departed the Degas-led organization. Caillebotte cited differences on an advertising issue.

Yet Caillebotte’s nonparticipation with the Impressionists was short lived.

The 32-year-old Caillebotte looked to a retro-style vision for an Impressionist Art Exhibition in 1882. His emerging partner was 51-year-old Impressionist art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922).

5th (1880):

The Fifth exhibition lost Monet to the Salon which per Degas’s ultimatum excluded the figurehead through which the term “impressionism” received its label in 1874 from exhibiting with the group of independents in 1880. Other broken or free brush painters such as Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot did continue to exhibit in the 5th show. Ironically, critics responded to the truncated, Degas-led show, by wondering out loud what made this Impressionist show any different than a recently liberated Salon. While Morisot and American Mary Cassatt’s artwork received especial attention and praise in the 5th show, the month-long April 1880 show also introduced important newcomers to its Paris audience such as Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850-1924).

Marie Bracquemond (1840-1916), La dame en blanc Ithe woman in white), oil on canvas, 180×100 cm. Musée de Cambrai.
Marie Bracquemond (1840-1916), Sur la terrasse à Sèvres, 1880, oil on canvas, 88 x 155 cm, Petit Palais, Geneva.
Félix Henri Bracquemond (1833-1914), Edmond de Goncourt, charcoal on canvas (original), 1880. Louvre. (This is a slightly later 1882 engraving.)
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), Interior (Woman at the Window), 1880, 116×89 cm, private.
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), Still Life, 1879, oil on canvas, 50×60 cm, private.
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Portrait of Madame J. , c. 1880, oil on canvas, 80.6×64.6 cm, The Peabody Institute, Baltimore MD.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Toilette, c. 1879, 21×15.9 cm. Private New York.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), The Dance Examination, pastel and charcoal on paper, 63.4×48.2 cm, Denver Art Museum
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), The Dance Lesson, oil on canvas, 38×86.3 cm, Private Virginia.
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), The Market Gardens of Vaugirard, c. 1879, oil on canvas, 65×100 cm, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton MA.
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), Summer (Young Woman By the Window), oil on canvas, 76×61 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier.
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), Woman at Her Toilette, c. 1875, 60.3×80.4 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago.
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), portrait (Young Woman Dressed for the Ball), oil on canvas, 71×54 cm, Musée d’Orsay.
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), The Woodcutter, 1879, oil on canvas, 89×116.2 cm, Holmes à Court Gallery Australia.
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Autumn Path through the Woods, oil on canvas, 81×65 cm, Private Paris.
Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850-1924), Mayor and Town Counselor, oil on canvas, 53.5×73 cm, Private New York.
Henri Rouart (1833-1912), Melun (Terrace on the Banks of the Seine), oil on canvas, 46.5×65.5 cm, Musée d’Orsay.
Federico Zandomeneghi (1841-1917), Mother and Daughter, 1879, oil on canvas, 62×52 cm, Private Italy.

6th (1881):

Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot continued their impact as the most progressive impressionists according to critics during the 6th Impressionist show in 1881. Morisot’s Nurse and Baby was startlingly abstract to viewers of the 1881 show. Zandomeneghi’s Place d’Anvers quietly inspired artists to explore anew early Renaissance Italian mural painting. Raffaëlli, displaying over 30 works in the 6th show, made a huge impact for his realist, socially aware artwork. The 6th show’s centerpiece was Degas’ statuette of the ballet student in a fabric tutu that put impressionism in 3D and affected modern sculpture going forward. Gustave Caillebotte who had participated in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th impressionist exhibitions (and would the 7th) as well as organized the 3rd, 4th, and 5th (and would the 7th), bowed out of participating at all in the 6th show.

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), The Garden (Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly), oil on canvas, 66×94 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), The Cup of Tea, 1879, oil on canvas, 92.4×65.4 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Cabaret, c. 1877, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., (Formerly, Corcoran Gallery of Art).
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), The Little 14-Year-Old Dancer, wax statuette, c.1881, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Author’s photograph, 2010.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Room in a Brothel, monotype in black ink on laid paper, 21×15.9cm, The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, formerly the Stanford University Museum of Art
Jean-Louis Forain (1852-1931), Loge d’actrice, 1880, watercolor with gouache, 28×23 cm, private Paris.
J.-B. Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927), Quai de la Rapée, oil on canvas,50×79 cm, Private Paris.
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), Nurse and Baby, 1880, oil on canvas, 50.2 x 61 cm, Private New York.
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Thatched Cottages at Val Hermé, 54×64.7 cm, private.
Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850-1924), Les déclassés (Les buveurs d’abstinthe), oil on canvas, 110.2×110.2 cm, Private.
Federico Zandomeneghi (1841-1917), La place d’anvers, 1880, oil on canvas, 100×135 cm, Galleria d’arte moderna Ricci Oddi Piacenza.

The Seventh Impressionist Art Exhibition: Caillebotte and Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922)

The changing art market in the 1870s had taken a financial toll on the art dealer’s modern art business. Durand-Ruel re-tooled his dealership to focus not on large-scale group shows but small shows of individual artists. Overall the French economy had sunk into hard times and big shows cost more money. Following the disastrous Hôtel Drouot auction in 1875—which Durand-Ruel believed was an attempt by his critics to discredit him as an art dealer—the well-stocked Impressionist art dealer reluctantly agreed to go forward with Caillebotte’s exhibition plan for 1882. Caillebotte convinced the dealer that the Seventh show would earn a small profit.

P.A.-Renoir, A Luncheon at Bougival, 1881, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition – 1882.

Caillebotte’s main hook was to re-integrate the excluded “broken brush” or “strict” impressionists including Renoir and Claude Monet. Degas and his faction of artists including Mary Cassatt stayed away from the Seventh Impressionist exhibition though Paul Gauguin was represented. Also missing was the artist of Aix, Paul Cézanne, who was experimenting with volumes in the south of France. Cézanne would not be seen in a Paris art show until 1895 when a huge body of his work was featured in a landmark retrospective exhibition at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery.

Caillebotte’s first move was to secure the popular Renoir for the upcoming March 1882 show. Renoir sent 24 new works, including his iconic large-format A Luncheon at Bougival (Un déjeuner à Bougival). Durand-Ruel insisted on a standardized presentation, including simple white frames for every work. In addition to Monet and Renoir, the seventh show hailed a triumphant return for Alfred Sisley. Camille Pissarro displayed several paintings of peasant girls. His tiny pseudo-pointillist brushstrokes overlaid with occasional dabs of thicker paint, built up an uneven surface that integrated the figure and background which worked to visually mimic the textures of the sitter’s wool clothing.

Caillebotte, “Rising Road (Chemin Montant).” 1881. The Seventh Impressionist Art Exhibition-1882.

Caillebotte sent 17 works to the show. The Bezique Game (Partie de bésigue) painted in 1880, was joined by Rising Road (Chemin Montant) painted in 1881. This latter work’s path hardly rises—a feature that contributed to the canvas’s mystery. The question was asked whether it was a reprise of the “enhanced perspective” that aggravated critics in 1876 when they saw it in The Floor Scrapers.

Rising Road is painted with a free handling of colors in the loose brushwork style of Monet and Renoir whose closer re-acquaintance Caillebotte made. One critic poked fun at the painting’s mysterious pair as viewers wondered with him who is “the conjugal couple…seen from the back” ? Their identities and location are uncertain although speculation has put Caillebotte in the painting with his lifelong companion Charlotte Berthier.

Rising Road (Chemin Montant) has had only two owners since 1881. It sold in 2003 for nearly $7 million ($6,727,500) at Christie’s in New York City,

7th (1882):

Gustave Caillebotte and Impressionist art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel organized the exhibition which marked the triumphant return of the broken-brush or strict Impressionists, such as Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In many ways it was Renoir’s wide-ranging artwork that was the star of the 7th show.

Gustave Caillebotte, Balcon (Balcony), 1880, oil on canvas, 26 1/4 x 24 in. (68 x 61 cm). Private Collection, Paris. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition-1882.
Paul Gauguin, A la Fenêtre, nature morte (At the Window, Still Life),1881, oil on canvas, 7.5 x 10.625 in (19 x 27 cm), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition-1882.
Jean-Baptiste-Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927), Paysage (fin octobre) (Landscape, End of October), c, 1876, oil on canvas, 17 7/8 x 48 1/8 in. (180 x 123 cm), Nasjonalgallereit, Oslo. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition-1882.
Claude Monet (1840-1926), Soleil couchant, sur la Seine, effet d’hiver (Sunset on the Seine, Winter Effect), 1880, oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 59 7/8 (100 x 152 cm), Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition-1882.
Camille Pissarro, Jeune paysanne prenant son café, (Young Peasant Woman Drinking Her Coffee), 1881, oil on canvas, 65.3 × 54.8 cm (25 11/16 × 21 9/16 in.), The Art Institute of Chicago. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition-1882.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Jongleuses au Cirque Fernando, (Jugglers/acrobats at the Cirque Fernando), 1879, oil on canvas, 131.2 × 99.2 cm (51 ½ × 39 1/16 in.), The Art Institute of Chicago. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition-1882.
Alfred Sisley, Saint-Mammès, temps gris (Saint-Mammès, Cloudy Weather), c. 1880, oil on canvas, 21 5/8 x 29 1/8 in. (54.8 x 74 cm), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition-1882.
Claude Monet, Bouquet de soliels (Bouquet of Sunflowers), c. 1880, oil on canvas, 39 3/4 x 32 in. (101 x 81.3 cm), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Seventh Impressionist Exhibition-1882.

Sources: 
Charles Moffett, The New Painting, 1986.
Anne Distel, Urban Impressionist, 1995.
Ross King, The Judgment of Paris: The Decade that Gave Us Impressionism, 2006.
John Milner, The Studios of Paris, 1990.
Alfred Werner, Degas Pastels, 1998.
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