I don’t post much about my job. I supervise, hire, train & counsel a staff of 12 young people at a well known upscale, deluxe food-to-go store. I also have the difficult task of buying the wine, beer & chocolate for all 3 of our stores. In this capacity I came upon today’s Birthday Gay. A favorite chocolate company- TCHO, out of San Francisco, has a series of bars with beautiful labels featuring Impressionist paintings from the de Young Museum’s Masterpieces from the Musee d’ Orsay exhibit. As I unloaded them from the shipping box, I came upon an image that held my interest in no small way. It is from an astonishing painting of 2 shirtless, muscled men planing a wood floor. The artist was someone that I was not familiar with, & I was on the hunt to learn all about him. The Husband pointed out the same image was the cover of a book of 19th century gay erotica, a gift from him 20 years ago. Hmm… maybe I just dove right into reading that book & not studying the cover. In the Summer of 2010, I became fascinated with painter- Gustave Caillebotte.
Gustave Caillebotte used to be dismissed as a minor outsider of French Impressionism. He was much younger than the main gang. He was personally very rich, & collected & supported their work. He was an excellent curator, & arranged many of their exhibitions. He paintings were rather somewhat non-impressionistic. He was modest about his talents. In his latter years, he painted less, devoting his time to gardening & boating. But from his 1st participation in an Impressionist exhibition, with paintings of modern Parisian life, he showed an entirely singular vein of invention: painting male nudes & producing work with an overt gay sensibility. For all his adult life he feared he would die young, & did, for no clear reason, at age 45.
Caillebotte stands apart among the Impressionists. His paintings depict working-class men in an urban context in full transformation. Caillebotte also used very innovative perspectives. His paintings are rather personal, autobiographical. You feel as if you were spying on a very private man, whose short life remains a mystery. He was an artist who was an Impressionist by association rather than by style or temperament.
His career as an artist feels unresolved. Certainly it was short. He stopped painting in a focused way in his 30s. By the 1890s he had become a semi-recluse at his estate- Petit-Gennevilliers, a property on the banks of the Seine near Argenteuil. He ceased showing his work at age 34 & devoted himself to gardening & to building & racing yachts, & with his friend Renoir, who often came to stay at Petit-Gennevilliers, they would have discussions on art, politics, literature, & philosophy. Caillebotte died there.
Self Portrait of the artist
His paintings & drawings are full of male bodies, often with a concealed face, often setting the bourgeois with the working class.The painting that grabbed me is The Floor Scrapers (Les raboteurs de parquet). It shows men at work, shirtless, showing their muscular bodies. His row men also produce erotic feelings. In the Self-Portrait at the Easel (Autoportrait au chevalet), the artist is painting in his studio, while in the background a man, the bottom half of his face concealed by the painter's arm, reads on a coach. A through line of melancholy flows from the paintings... & a definitive homoeroticism.
Self Portrait... he seems to have been a beautiful man
I knew nothing of you before, but I had a great summer researching your enigmatic life. I know that you never married or seemed to have any relationship with a woman, spending your time gardening, rowing,& befriending & painting interesting, handsome men. I think I get the picture. I am a gay man in the 21st century, reaching back to the 19th century to find you. Happy Birthday, Monsiuer Caillebotte.
This is the image from the chocolate. It started a summer of research about the painter.
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