Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877.

With the rise of Realism and photography in the realm of nineteenth century art, painters turned to what they knew to create: miraculous works of art. This is exactly what Gustave Caillebotte executed with his 1877 oil-on-canvas piece Paris Street; Rainy Day. The painting portrays a couple walking along the rue de Turin in Paris, France, located just around the corner from the Saint-Lazare train station. Not so coincidentally, this spot could be viewed from the window of Caillebotte's Paris study.

Though the setting of the painting provides interesting historical background, the technique makes the painting incredibly captivating. At first glance, the brushstrokes differ drastically from the strategically placed geometric splotches of Cezzane or the smoothed figures of Degas, yet his sweeping brushstrokes (as evident in the cobblestone road) uniquely emphasized the exactness of the Parisian architecture.  However the most interesting aspect of the painting is his use of focus to simulate photography with his painting. Caillebotte creates symbiosis between the architectural accuracy of the scene (such as the detailed scaffolding of the newly renovated buildings in the background) and experimentation with optics. The couple in the foreground of the painting has a slightly unfocused appearance, drawing the eye to the other complexities of the painting.

Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day represents a bold response to the changing artistic realm, and brought an interesting and wildly different perspective of a modernizing Paris. The painting strayed away from many of the brightly colored paintings of the Impressionist movement and instead used a fisheye effect to create complexity. As far as many reactions to photography were concerned, Paris Street; Rainy Day epitomized this Impressionist goal.