Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. Small repaired tear on cover. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Gustave Caillebotte was until recently the “forgotten man” of Impressionism but he is now recognized as one of the most interesting and attractive artists in the group and as the painter of some of its most powerful and memorable images. A close friend of the other Impressionists Caillebotte exhibited with them in five out of the seven Impressionist exhibitions where his works received a great deal of critical attention. Much wealthier than his colleagues he had no need to sell his works and most of his paintings remained in family hands and out of circulation. When he died Caillebotte left an extraordinary bequest of Impressionist paintings to the French nation and became known primarily as a great collector. He began to attract attention as a painter again in the late 1960s and 1970s when his particular kind of realism-tightly painted and with bold spatial arrangements that suggest a modern cinematic or photographer’s eye-suddenly seemed specifically contemporary. This book by Kirk Varnedoe based on the pioneering exhibition catalogue he wrote in 1976 examines the distinctive role Caillebotte played in Impressionism and in early modern art. Through detailed examination of individual paintings Varnedoe discusses Caillebotte’s sources his influences on other painters his working methods and characteristic themes. Varnedoe focuses on how Caillebotte’s work evokes both the public life of the new Paris rebuilt by Haussmann and the private world of his family and apartment a duality reflecting his own ambivalent position as a member of the “rebel” Impressionist group and as a wealthy merchant’s son. An appendix discusses the controversial details of his great bequest to the French state. (MP)