Gustave Caillebotte 94 High Resolution Images

Get lost in the brilliant Impressionist work of French Artist, Gustave Caillebotte. Lose yourself in his amazing gardens and outdoor scenes.

This download features 94 hi-res images, in jpeg format, by Impressionist, Gustave Caillebotte.

The images are nearly all 600dpi or 300dpi and range in size from 2999 pixels wide/tall to 14985 pixels wide/tall.

The pictures are out of copyright and in the public domain, so you are free to use them in whatever way you'd like, including commercial use.

Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) was a French painter who was a member and patron of the Impressionists, although he painted in a more realistic manner than many others in the group. Caillebotte was known for his early interest in photography as an art form.

Gustave Caillebotte was born on 19 August 1848 to an upper-class Parisian family living in the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis. His father, Martial Caillebotte (1799–1874), was the inheritor of the family's military textile business and was also a judge at the Tribunal de Commerce de la Seine. Caillebotte's father was twice widowed before marrying Caillebotte's mother, Céleste Daufresne (1819-1878), who had two more sons after Gustave.

Caillebotte earned a law degree in 1868 and a license to practice law in 1870, and he also was an engineer. Shortly after his education, he was drafted to fight in the Franco-Prussian war, and served from July 1870 to March 1871 in the Garde Nationale Mobile de la Seine.

After the war, Caillebotte began visiting the studio of the painter Léon Bonnat, where he began to study painting seriously. He then developed an accomplished style in a relatively short time and had his first studio in his parents' home. In 1873, Caillebotte entered the École des Beaux-Arts, but apparently did not spend much time there. He inherited his father's fortune in 1874 and the surviving sons divided the family fortune after their mother's death in 1878. Gustave and his brother sold the Yerres estate and moved into an apartment on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris.

Around 1874, Caillebotte had met and befriended several artists working outside the Académie des Beaux-Arts, including Edgar Degas and Giuseppe de Nittis, and attended (but did not participate in) the First Impressionist Exhibition of 1874. The "Impressionists" had broken away from the academic painters showing in the annual Salons.

Caillebotte made his debut in the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876, showing eight paintings, including 'The Floor Scrapers' (1875), his earliest masterpiece. Its subject matter, the depiction of labourers preparing a wooden floor (thought to have been that of the artist's own studio) was considered "vulgar" by some critics and this is the probable reason for its rejection by the Salon of 1875. At the time, the art establishment deemed only rustic peasants or farmers acceptable subjects from the working class.

Caillebotte painted many domestic and familial scenes, interiors, and portraits. Many of his paintings depict members of his family.

His country scenes at Yerres focus on pleasure boating on the leisurely stream as well as fishing and swimming, and domestic scenes around his country home. He often used a soft impressionistic technique reminiscent of Renoir to convey the tranquil nature of the countryside, in sharp contrast to the flatter, smoother strokes of his urban paintings. 

In 1881, Caillebotte acquired a property at Petit-Gennevilliers, on the banks of the Seine near Argenteuil, and he moved there permanently in 1888. He ceased showing his work at age 34 and devoted himself to gardening and building and racing yachts, and he spent much time with his brother, Martial, and his friend Auguste Renoir. Renoir often came to stay at Petit-Gennevilliers and engaged in far-ranging discussions on art, politics, literature and philosophy. Caillebotte was a model for Renoir's 1881 painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party. Although he never married, Caillebotte appears to have had a serious relationship with Charlotte Berthier, a woman eleven years his junior and of the lower class, to whom he left a sizeable annuity.

Caillebotte died of pulmonary congestion while working in his garden at Petit-Gennevilliers in 1894 at age 45. He was interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.