Creating a Scene to Make an Impression How Gustave Caillebotte and His Street Scenes of Haussmannian Modernity Support Impressionism Without Subscription An honors thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts in Art History at the University of Notre Dame Isabel Josephine Cabezas Class of 2017 Advisor ______________________ Dennis Doordan, Professor of Art History and Architecture May 8, 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction | 1 Transformation and Conversion | 3 Beginning Impressionism...Or Growing Out of Realism | 6 Flâneurs Admiring Paris, or New Architecture Featuring Flâneurs? | 11 Le Pont de l’Europe and Sur le Pont de l’Europe | 12 ​ ​ ​ Paris Street, Rainy Day | 17 ​ Of or For Impressionism? | 20 Techniques and Style | 21 Financial Support | 26 Conclusion | 29 Figures | 33 Bibliography | 41 With thanks to the University of Notre Dame and its Department of Art, Art History, and Design, especially Professor Dennis Doordan, Professor Nicole Woods, and the Hesburgh Libraries; Holton-Arms School; National Gallery of Art; and my friends and family, especially my mother. Cabezas 1 Creating a Scene to Make an Impression How Gustave Caillebotte and His Street Scenes of Haussmannian Modernity Support Impressionism Without Subscription Introduction 19th-century Paris witnessed a redesign of its urban fabric and a revolution in styles of painting. Under Napoleon III’s Second Empire (1852-70), Baron Georges Haussmann transformed medieval Paris into a modern metropolis in an attempt to improve municipal sanitation and transportation, enhance urban beauty, and to facilitate governmental control over the city. The impact of this extensive redesign of Paris’ urban fabric extended to quotidian activities, as well as to the fine arts. French painting, for example, became less calculated and predictable. French artists responded to Haussmann’s transformation of Paris by straying from accepted norms and the Salon jury’s approval of genre and technique.1 Impressionist painters took scenes of ordinary, contemporary life as their subject matter, to provide viewers with an impression, or sense, of the encounter, and innovatively extended the frame and plane of the narrative to include the viewer. Gustave Courbet’s mid-19th-century Realism movement — in which he depicted scenes of labor and ordinary life instead of allegories or historical scenes meant to advance political agendas, and also showed in his own gallery after Salon rejection — sowed the seeds of the Impressionism.2 This generation of French painters could not survive without its own member, Gustave Caillebotte. 1 Burstein, Jessica. "Visual Art." In The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Culture, edited by Celia Marshik, 145-7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. “The Paris Salon was the juried biennial exhibition run by the Academy of Fine Arts, an outgrowth of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (founded 1684). The Salon constituted national aesthetic standards...there was no charge for entry, and the public could absorb what was deemed fine art." 2 When the Salon rejected some of his paintings in 1855, Courbet persisted to display his works and set up his own gallery, The Pavilion of Realism, just outside the Exposition Universelle. ​ ​ ​ ​ Cabezas 2 Emerging just after Haussmannization, Impressionism recorded fleeting moments of an updated Paris. Citizens had an unfamiliar streetscape to learn and explore, one of wide boulevards, sewers, gas lights, parks, and uniform six-story buildings; such was the physical environment of Haussmannian modernity. Responding to the upgraded infrastructure of Haussmannization, the Impressionists used novel techniques, such as loose brushwork and a participatory point of view, to produce an avant-garde conception of the city. Paintings now depicted Parisians’ movement and exploration of new spaces, as if the viewer had participated in the moment. This method broke with the style and traditional hierarchy of subjects that the Salon favored: scenes of antiquity or historical narratives, followed by portraits, landscapes, genre scenes, and still lifes, all in the classical style. As a group of Salon-rejected artists who sought to create a cultural space for this unconventional style of art and had no obligation to a dictated taste, the Impressionists broke from the norm as they recorded Parisian interactions, views, and relationships that anyone could access and observe in the street. In this paper I will examine how Gustave Caillebotte depicted Haussmanian modernity in his paintings of Parisian streetscapes. Having begun his artistic career as an Academically trained painter, Caillebotte’s life provide a series of contradictions that both place him within and set him apart from the Impressionist movement. How his life straddled belonging and disengagement can account for the sub-scenes present in his street scenes that focus equally on architecture and human experience. These sub-scenes form the foundations of my case for why Caillebotte does not align with the typical Impressionist in belonging, style, and technique. Cabezas 3 Transformation and Conversion Paris underwent a major redesign during the Second Empire of Napoleon III to relieve the city from its dark, dangerous, and dirty state. Sewage systems aided in improving sanitation, and green spaces and widened boulevards allowed for better traffic flow and made walking an enjoyable activity. The intervalled installation of street lamps, due to the advent of electricity, meant that people could safely stroll during the night; artificial light made for an entirely new experience of the city. Uninterrupted, straight streets had not existed before 1852, with the exception of “ceremonial rarities like the rue de Rivoli. But under the boulevard program of Baron Haussmann, the look of this street — incredibly broad, bullet-straight, and seemingly stretching to infinity — became the pervasive hallmark of the new city.”3 By 1870, the streets of Paris were unrecognizable to anyone who lived in the city before Haussmannization (Figs. 1-3). In addition to redesigning the layout of Paris, Baron Haussmann introduced a new architectural style to unify the urban landscape. The consistent nature of these structures, that are so identifiably Parisian today, erased and replaced the charm and mystery of Medieval Paris. Commenting on how one building indistinguishably became the next, Caillebotte’s close friend and fellow Impressionist Auguste Renoir complained that they appeared “cold and lined up like soldiers at a review.”4 As uniformity replaced variety, Haussmann’s expensive apartments became a bourgeois commodity. 3 Varnedoe, Kirk. Gustave Caillebotte. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. 84-5. ​ ​ 4 Rubin, James H. “Renovation and Modern Viewpoints: Roads, Bridges, and City Spaces.” In Impressionism and ​ the Modern Landscape: Productivity, Technology, and Urbanization from Manet to Van Gogh, 17-37. Berkeley: ​ University of California Press, 2008. 34. Cabezas 4 Gustave Caillebotte enjoyed the comforts of a well-to-do Parisian family throughout his life. Born on August 19, 1848 to Martial Caillebotte, the head of a military textile company, and Céleste Daufresne, he spent his first 18 years in the upper-class 10th arrondissement on the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis, just outside of Paris’ city walls. The family also had an extensive garden property in Yerres, a southeastern suburb of Paris, that provided the opportunity for boating on a river of the same name. In 1866, the family moved to their newly built home at the corner of 77 rue de Miromesnil and 13 rue de Lisbonne, in the 8th arrondissement that Haussmann had just refurbished. Having studied classics at Lycée Louis Le Grand, Gustave Caillebotte later graduated ​ ​ with a master’s law degree in 1868 and received his law license in 1870.5 He briefly served in the Garde Nationale Mobile during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1); two small paintings reveal this time as the start of his artistic career.6 “He joined Léon Bonnat's studio in 1872 and passed ​ ​ ​ the entrance examination for the École des Beaux-Arts on 18 March 1873, though the École’s ​ ​ records make no mention of his work there, and his attendance seems to have been short-lived.”7 The reputable guidance of Bonnat, a naturalist painter, elevated Caillebotte’s hobby to a serious undertaking, which his father supported through his willingness to construct a painting studio adjacent to the family house around 1874-5.8 The Floor Scrapers (Fig. 4), painted in 1875, ​ probably represents this fact, as “it has long been recognized that the finishing performed in The ​ 5 Berhaut, Marie. "Caillebotte, Gustave." In The Grove Dictionary of Art, edited by Jane Turner, 53-7. New York: ​ ​ St. Martin's, 2000. 54. 6 Chardeau, Gilles. “Caillebotte: A Biographical Chronology.” In Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye, edited by ​ ​ Mary Morton and George T. M. Shackelford, 233-49. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. 234. 7 Berhaut, Caillebotte, 54. ​ ​ 8 Guegan, Stephan. “Ecce Homo.” In Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye, edited by Mary Morton and George T. ​ ​ M. Shackelford, 99-107. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. 100. Cabezas 5 Floor Scrapers is appropriate to the installation of a new parquet, not the reconditioning on an ​ existing surface.”9 The Floor Scrapers was Caillebotte’s first serious painting, indicated by its 6’ 4” x 4’ 9” size and its submission to the Salon of 1875. Caillebotte takes a Marvillian approach10 by “chronicling the changing landscape of his own urban experience,” but through his familiar method of Realist painting.11 A vacant room, the arduous handiwork of laborers, and rough shavings comprehensively signify the flux of creating an original space. The middle worker’s outstretched arms simultaneously carve the space for a new material and draw viewers into the scene that then fixes one’s eye upon the empty, shiny floorboards of the upper left. The stark reflection of the deep brown wood, in conjunction with the shining skin of the straining, shirtless workers unmistakably relates the scene as a hot and humid site of sweaty labor.