The Floor Scrapers

Gustave Caillebotte
Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers, 1875
This Impressionist piece contains three workers on their knees working tediously to scrape the floors of a bourgeois apartment. The three shirtless men seem to represent a form of masculinity and strength as they are the workforce behind creating such an extravagant setting, but their hunched poses could be hinting at vulnerability and exhaustion instead. The 19th century was filled with wealthy people attempting to impress their snobby friends with baller houses and fancy clothes, which is cool until you realize that their are other guys doing labor jobs for some terrible pay.

The renovation occurring in the apartment also references the modernization of Paris with new technological developments. The city is getting filled with railroad stations, crowded streets, and luxury apartment buildings.

The costs for all these improvements are the hardships of manual labor. The floor scrapings are curled just like the curled men. The aren't in a comfortable position, and the rich would never understand how complex and difficult it is to create what they desire. That's probably why this painting was first rejected, as people did not enjoy how the bodies were portrayed.
  • 7:00 AM

Man at his Bath

Gustave Caillebotte
Gustave Caillebotte, Homme au Bain, 1884
By LILI TUCKER

You know you've done something wrong when your painting has to be locked up because the public is so horrified by it.

But it wasn't the nudity that shocked the public. Nudity had been a fairly normal theme throughout this time and paintings of bathers rarely posed any problems. However, this particular painting caused such an uproar it was forced off the wall and into a locked vault where it stayed for over 80 years.

Brettell theorizes, in the late 1800s, artists such as: Enckell, Picasso, Manet and Caillebotte began using the nude in a new way. These paintings became realistic portrayals of people and their environment. There were no attempts to show an idealized form of the human body. The people shown were not gods or goddesses- just typical 19th century people doing typical 19th century things...naked.

This painting is no different. Caillebotte portrays this man at his bath in his private bathroom, devoid of any decoration. In the same way, this man is devoid of any decoration, any god-like lustre or fanfare. We are peering into a vulnerable, private moment and we feel guilty for it. It's not the man's fault for being nude, it's our fault for watching him. Brettell says, "we are asked...to recoil from the act of grazing. As viewers, we are ashamed" (Brettell 135). Thus, even though the man is shown in a fairly vulnerable state, it is the viewer that is rendered vulnerable and-- naked.

In 2011, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston tried to buy the painting but the donors wouldn't allow it due to it's subject matter. So, the MFA decided to sell 8 of the donor's paintings in order to afford the painting. The works sold for this particular painting included works by: Monet, Renoir, Gaugin, Pissaro, Sisley.

You know you've done something right when the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston sells eight donor paintings just to buy your painting for $7 million.

  • 7:00 AM

Paris Street, Rainy Day

Gustave Caillebotte
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877
BY MELISA CAPAN

Alas, here comes the rise and reformation of cities everywhere. As urban capitalism spreads, Paris becomes the ultimate paradigm for change. Baron Haussmann’s renovations erupted in 1853 with new parks and avenues thanks to Napoléon III’s vast public works program. The sharp new boulevards and rows of impeccable buildings changed the cityscape and created the Paris we know today. Industrialization was greeted with praise; however, various critiques leaked. 

Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street, Rainy Day encapsulates the gloomy side of urban capitalism. Dark umbrellas shelter top-hatted men and women with long skirts. These monotonous figures show how modernization affects the people of Paris. The broad boulevards and uniform buildings promote a feeling of complete loneliness. Paris Street, Rainy Day shares how modern life refuses to create close relations between human beings. Caillebotte’s take on urban capitalism proves to be rather somber than praise.
  • 7:00 AM

Art History Hotties: The Floor Scrapers

Art History Hotties
Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers, 1875
By LISA MAEDA

"What image am I trying to capture? Uh, you know. The toils of labor."

I like to imagine what sort of things Gustave Caillebotte must have said to his models. "Yes, your shirts have to be off for this." "Just bend over and pretend to scrape the floor." "It's not weird guys, it's art!"

With confidence, Caillebotte submited The Floor Scrapers, or Les raboteurs de parquet, to France's Salon with high hopes. He replicated the gloomy morning light as it shone onto the floorboard. Lean, characterless men hunched over, scraping away dutifully. Just a simple piece of workers in the early hours of the day. Seems innocent enough, right? Surely the Salon would approve.

The response: a solid rejection. Immediately, Caillebotte received his entry back thanks to its "vulgar subject material." It seemed that the Salon saw something different, something less earnest. Perhaps they were right to think that, but either way, Caillebotte took great offense. At the time, male nudity in art yielded to the female nude, which dominated interest. One critic remarked on the precision of the scene, claiming that the painting was optically accurate, but was limited because of it. Amusingly, another claimed that the models simply weren't attractive enough. If Caillebotte wanted to paint nudes, why not go all the way?

Perhaps unbeknownst to them, Caillebotte had indeed painted handsome male nudes, and would continue to do so. Notable works such as Homme au bain, and Man Drying his Leg popped up only a few years later, evidence of Caillebotte's refusal to deny himself the subject matter.

Never give up on what you love. Caillebotte loved painting naked dudes, and nobody, not even the Salon, could stop him.

  • 7:00 AM

Caillebotte and "No Man Is An Island"

A Paris Street Rain
Gustave Caillebotte, A Paris Street, Rain, 1877

No Man Is An Island
By John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Caillebotte's painting creates the illusion of disunity between its figures, each huddled under their own umbrellas. It undermines poet John Donne's idea that human lives are the sum of their interactions with other people, that each person endures similar joys, hardships, and growth.

Editor's Note: Students were asked to match a poem to a picture. They could do so with or without comment; they could be serious or playful. We will leave it to our dear readers to make the connection.
  • 7:00 AM

The Floor Scrapers

Camille O'Leary
Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers, 1875

At the 1875 Salon, The Floor-Scrapers was rejected as too vulgar - a semi-nude painting of the urban lower class at work. Gustave Caillebotte was criticized for his choice of subject matter and his frank interpretation of the male figures. Critics claimed the shirtless men were too thin, their chests too narrow, and their proportions simply not idealized enough. Louis Enault proclaimed, “Do the nude, gentlemen, if the nude suits you…. But either make your nude beautiful or leave it alone.” Caillebotte, a wealthy lawyer and engineer with an inheritance from his parents (who sold blankets to the French army), could afford to ignore the whims of the Salon judges and take up the philosophy of Impressionism.

The unusual perspective of Caillebotte’s painting traps the workers, weighing down on them, but the men themselves appear unconcerned. Two of them have casually turned their heads to converse with each other, and a bottle of alchohol sits off to the side. The long, sinewy arms of the workers are better suited to labor than the impressive physique of classical statuary. They are scraping a layer of older varnish off the floor in order to clean and prepare it for a new coat, in long, regular strokes. The discarded shavings curl and twist in a manner that echoes the metalwork of the door in the upper-right corner. The tilted floor, with its horizon line almost at the top of the painting, is characteristic of Caillebotte’s style, an affectation borrowed from the newly developing art of photography. 

Caillebotte’s engineering training may have contributed to his precise treatment of perspective and architecture. In addition, he worked together with his brother, Martial Caillebotte, who was a photographer. Although no concrete evidence has been found, art historians speculate that some of Caillebotte’s tracing paper sketches, done on paper the same size as a photograph, may be studies traced from his brother’s photographs. The strangely detached paintings his methods produced, which imitated photographic depth of field and looked from unusual angles, were different from the main body of Impressionist work, but nevertheless valuable.

  • 7:00 AM

Paris Street, Rainy Day

Camille O'Leary
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877

Caillebotte was an outsider among the Impressionists; a lawyer from a wealthy family who espoused the ideals of the Impressionist movement, but whose flat, exacting style of painting had more to do with Realism. Living off a large inheritance from his parents, he pursued painting and gardening as hobbies while buying artwork from his colleagues, amassing a sizable collection of Impressionist work. His own paintings were influenced by the growing art of photography, using tricks like cropping, tilted floors, and high vantage points to create unusual and precise perspectives.

Paris Street, Rainy Day prominently showcases the new boulevards and changes to the cityscape taking place during this period. The “Haussmanization” of Paris meant great leaps forward in urban planning, bringing new public parks, monuments, facilities, and more. The sharp, geometric buildings of this intersection near the Gare St-Lazare tower over the disproportionately small people in the streets. As the scene extends back into the distance, it blurs, mimicking the limited depth of field of a photograph. The flatness of the shading evokes, more than anything, more modern artists like Edward Hopper, not Impressionism. The unusually detached crowd move like sleepwalkers, none of them making eye contact. In fact, the three people in the right foreground are about to unwittingly collide. The overall effect comes off as carefully planned, but still amazingly spontaneous; the viewer feels as though they have stepped outside on a rainy day in Paris to marvel at the grand façades of their modern city.
  • 7:00 AM

Man at His Bath

Drew Bierwirth
Gustave Caillebotte, Man at His Bath, 1884

Caillebotte is most known for his scenes of urban life with strong perspective such as Paris Street, Rainy Day. In this piece, Caillebotte changes his style drastically. The rainy blue palette is quite similar to his other works, but this piece is far more intimate than the others. Viewing it has a distinctly voyeuristic feel to it, mostly due to the view from behind the man as if we had come through a door and interrupted him.

I love this piece because of the delicate vulnerability it has. There is an air of voyeurism, clearly, but it doesn't feel very naughty at all. On the contrary, it feels rather intimate. Caillebotte's attention to detail, from the wet footprints on the floor to the tension in the towel, amplifies the emotions of the piece instead of distracting from them. The stark white curtain highlights the man, almost cutting the piece in half; one side is him and the other side is his bath and some strewn towel on the ground. He is separate from the small space, though I can't place my finger on how.

  • 7:00 AM

Paris Street, Rainy Day

Gustave Caillebotte
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877
Gustave Caillebotte's interest in art began with photography, and from there he started to paint. This inclination of his towards photography influenced his painting, as depth of field and other qualities from photography were apparent in his works. In this painting, the two people in the foreground are slightly blurred while the people in the background seems to be in better focus. The buildings in the background become the vanishing point and become a mystery to the viewer. The figures in the painting are complacent, and the painting depicts a casual day in Paris in the time period.

 The intersection near the railroad Gare Saint-Lazare is shown in the painting and the figures are walking on the rue de Turin. The colors, which are grays, are beautiful, and the people's casual strolls make it feel like a true moment. I'm thankful for this painting because it was one of the first paintings I ever noticed when I was younger. I thought it was beautiful. My dad had just introduced the board game Masterpiece to me and my sister, and it was then that this painting caught my eye. I would try to get it every time we played even if it was not to my advantage. The painting inspired me.

  • 7:00 AM

Umbrellas - Paris Street, Rainy Day

Caillebotte
Umbrellas
Curated by Max Cantu-Lima
Gustave Caillebott, Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877
Painted in 1877, Gustave Caillebotte’s painting Paris Street, Rainy Day, depicts a new Paris, renovated by Baron Haussmann under Napoleon. The cobble road, the street lamps, and the building all fresh and clean with crisp lines, represents the feel of Paris. The city did not have the same feel as the old for the citizens. Improved sewage and avenues fixed the waste management problems as well as the complex road system the city once had. The city lacked the imperfections the buildings once owned, their uniqueness. Paris, like a new pair a shoes, alien at touch, had to be broken into, put to use, worn before it could earn the sense of home that it once provided.

This new city provided modern stores and residences. By cleaning up the waste, Paris became more attractive. Accompanied with this new modernism, were the citizens, as upper class was growing, as represented by the attire worn by the couple and the surrounding townsman. The top hats, suits, and umbrellas were demonstrations of their social standing. The dark, clean, and flat surfaces of the umbrellas connect the city and its population, both fresh and foundations for the years to come.

  • 8:00 AM