Caillebotte Paintings
1848 - 1894 France,Impressionism
The Yerres, Rain, 1875
Oil on canvas, 31 7/8 x 23 1/8 inches (81 x 59 cm)
Indiana University Art Museum Landscapes
Zola , who will take the party of the Impressionists vilified by critics and refused by the jury of the Salon, will be critical with regard to Caillebotte of whom he will denounce "photographic" realism at the time of the second Impressionist exhibition. The painter will then present the eight following paintings: Floor scrapers , Young man playing the piano, Young man at his window, Lunch, After Lunching and Two Gardens. Zola will thus comment on the talent of Caillebotte in his Letters of Paris of June 1876:
"Caillebotte exposed "The floor scrapers" and "Young man at his window" , of an astonishing relief. However, it is a completely anti-artistic painting , a painting clear like glass, of a middle-class kind by its exactitude. The photography of reality, when it is not enhanced by the original print of artistic talent, is a pitiful thing ".
