Tag: Impressionists

I’m fascinated by famous artists that are also collectors -Edgar Degas is one such artist who was also a collector and owned paintings by Edouard Manet and Paul Gauguin. Another such artist who was an avid collector – and left his amazing collection for Musee d’Orsay (Paris) – is the French Impressionist artist Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894). Though he was part of the French Impressionist Movement, his own paintings were more realistic – they had less of the light airiness of Monet and the gaiety of Renoir’s boating parties and more of the stark, modern cityscapes and city workers of Haussmann’s Paris.

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Caillebotte was different from the other Impressionist artists in another way – he was born into a wealthy family and did not need to sell his paintings. Not only did he not need to sell his own work, he supported the other Impressionists by regularly buying paintings from these avant-garde artists at a time when they did not enjoy the same patronage that classical Salon artists did. In 1876, Caillebotte purchased his first Monet, after which he bought numerous paintings from Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, and Sisley.

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On his death he bequeathed his collection of 68 impressionist paintings to Musee d’Orsay, who interestingly were not interested in this bequest. Caillebotte’s younger brother and Renoir spent months convincing the museum to accept the paintings, and in 1895 they accepted 40 of them.

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These paintings now form the heart of Musee d’Orsay’s impressionist collection. The museum did try to acquire the rest from Caillebotte’s niece Genevieve Caillebotte in the early 1900s but she denied the request and the paintings were sold to collectors. Many can be found at the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia – I found this Edouard Manet that was purchased by an American and later donated to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas.  

Caillebotte and his brother also had the largest stamp collection in France, which is now at the British Library. This amazing artist collector was also responsible for convincing the Muse de Louvre to purchase Edouard Manet’s Olympia.