About this artwork
Caillebotte painted Paris Street; Rainy Day in 1877, the year of the third Impressionist exhibition, where it was shown to a public that was still getting used to the idea of modern life as a subject for painting. He was 29 years old, wealthy, trained as a lawyer and an engineer, and painting as a hobby. He was also the most generous patron of the Impressionist group, lending money to Monet and Renoir, paying rent for Pissarro, and buying paintings that nobody else wanted.
The painting shows a street intersection in the new Paris that Baron Haussmann had carved out of the old city in the 1850s and 1860s. The streets are wide, straight, and lined with uniform apartment buildings. The figures are middle-class Parisians walking in the rain, carrying umbrellas, their faces partially obscured. A man and a woman walk toward the viewer in the foreground, their bodies cut by the edge of the canvas. Other figures are scattered across the composition, some walking away, some crossing the street, some barely visible in the distance.
The composition is built on a radical perspective. The viewer stands at the corner of two streets, looking down both simultaneously. The lamppost in the center divides the canvas in two, creating a split view that has no precedent in European painting. The figures are placed with the precision of a photograph, their positions carefully calculated to create a pattern of overlapping umbrellas and bodies that fills the space without crowding it.
Caillebotte was the most technically skilled of the Impressionists, and the least interested in the effects of light and atmosphere that preoccupied Monet and Renoir. His paintings are sharp, detailed, and precisely drawn, with a cool, observational quality that has more in common with the realism of Degas than with the loose brushwork of his Impressionist colleagues. Paris Street; Rainy Day is his masterpiece, and it is one of the most carefully composed paintings of the 19th century.
Oil on canvas, 212 by 276 centimeters. Caillebotte painted with a smooth, almost invisible brushwork, building the figures and buildings in thin, even layers. The surfaces of the street and the buildings are painted in cool grays and browns, with the rain suggested by the wet sheen on the cobblestones. The umbrellas are painted in dark, uniform tones, their surfaces smooth and regular. The surface has the still, worked quality of an academic painting, which is partly what makes it so unsettling: the technique is traditional, but the composition is not.
The horizontal format and cool palette make this print work well in a living room, dining room, or office. The grays, browns, and muted blues pair with modern furniture, concrete floors, and rooms with a minimalist design. The 18x24 size is the best choice, as the composition needs width to read. The painting has a cool, observational quality that suits rooms with a modern mood.
The painting entered the Art Institute of Chicago's collection in 1964, as part of the Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection. It is one of the most important Impressionist paintings in an American museum.
This is a public domain artwork, scanned from the original at the Art Institute of Chicago. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.
