Gustave Caillebotte as Worker, Collector, Painter

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Gustave Caillebotte was more than a painter: he collected and researched postage stamps; designed and built yachts; administered and participated in the sport of yachting; collected paintings; cultivated and collected rare orchids; designed and tended his gardens; and engaged in local politics. Gustave Caillebotte as Worker, Collector, Painter presents the first comprehensive account of Caillebottes manifold activities. It presents a completely new critical interpretation of Caillebottes broad career that highlights the singular salience of work, and which intersects histories and theories of visual culture, ideology, and psychoanalysis. Where the recent art historical rediscovery of Caillebotte offers multiple narratives of his identification with working men, this book goes beyond them towards excavating what his work was in its own terms. Born to an haut bourgeois milieu in which he was never completely comfortable and assailed by traumatic familial bereavements, Caillebotte adopted and adapted the ideologically normative category of work for his own purposes, deconstructing its ostensibly class-determinate parameters in order to bridge the chasm of his social alienation.

Reviews

Raybones perspective on the artist is highly original, as is clear from the outset when he stages a brilliant coup de thtre by quoting references in the British press in 1890 to his collection as magnificent and an unparalleled achievement, before revealing that these eulogies were of his stamp collection. * Evening Standard *
This study reassesses Gustave Caillebotte's career in its entirety, bringing into play notably his intensive pursuit of philately and his ambitious garden designs. Hardly noticed in previous accounts, these two concerns are brilliantly anatomized and shown to be integral aspects of the artist's creative life. * Stephen Bann, Emeritus Professor of History of Art, University of Bristol, UK *
Raybones excellent, well-researched book on Gustave Caillebotte offers us gripping new readings of the artists labour in its broadest sense, incorporating not only novel analyses of his art and material practice as a painter, but integrating this aspect of his life more effectively than ever before with his other work as an art collector, pre-eminent philatelist, racing yacht designer and master-sailor, innovative gardener and orchid-breeder. Caillebotte emerges from Raybones important, thought-provoking study as a more complex and complete personality, and in ways that simultaneously provide us with fresh insights into Impressionism and French society in the period. * Anthea Callen, Emeritus Professor, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia *

Author Bio

Samuel Raybone is Lecturer in Art History at Aberystwyth University, UK.