[Analysis] While at first glance, Gustave Caillebotte’s “Paris Street; Rainy Day” may not come across as an archetypal Impressionist painting, it indeed contains several hallmarks of the late-nineteenth-century art movement. In this masterpiece, the artist captured a fleeting moment, giving observers the feeling of traveling back in time.
Gustave Caillebotte’s urban landscape painting “Paris Street; Rainy Day,” created in 1877, depicts a pluvial intersection in the French capital of the late nineteenth century. Measuring over 2 by 2.76 meters, the monumental oil-on-canvas piece has been in the Art Institute of Chicago’s stock for over fifty years. Initially exhibited at the independently organized Third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877, it dominated the show alongside Claude Monet’s “Gare Saint-Lazare” and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Dance at the Moulin de la Galette.” In 2019, the Old National Gallery in Berlin presented “Paris Street; Rainy Day” as part of its exhibit “Gustave Caillebotte: Painter and Patron of Impressionism.”
In detail, the vast artwork shows a bustling Parisian intersection near the railway station Gare Sainte-Lazare under a dripping shower. In the foreground, an elegantly dressed couple walks along a pavement, sheltered from the heavy rain by a wide umbrella. A gentleman with a black hat passes by, slightly tilting his large brolly to the right. In the middle, a coated gent crosses the path, tensely gazing toward the ground. A dull-green streetlamp stands out in the center of the scene. Multiple small figures are seen walking up and down the boulevards, and neat town domiciles appear in the backdrop.
In “Paris Street; Rainy Day,” the painter captured an ephemeral moment conveyed, among other methods, through an unorthodox photography-like cropping technique. The rain’s reflections on the pavement, depicted accurately by the artist, as well as the shadows cast by the passers-by, specifically exude the prevailing atmosphere. Muted colors dominate the scenery. The carefully considered perspective becomes apparent through the lamppost precisely separating the foreground from the center and from distant views. Using the then-popular camera lucida, an optical instrument helping with the accurate sketching of objects, the artist made precise preparations before commencing with the actual act of painting.
At first view, Caillebotte’s masterpiece “Paris Street; Rainy Day” may not look like a typical Impressionist work. Indeed, no bright colors were used, no visible brushstrokes can be spotted, and no blurriness appears in front of the viewer’s eyes. However, upon closer examination, the Impressionist approach clearly comes across: “Paris Street; Rainy Day” captures a fleeting moment, the artist depicted an ordinary scene, a photography-like cropping technique was used, and the reflections of the water on the pavement can be clearly observed. In capturing an ephemeral moment, “Paris Street; Rainy Day,” may give viewers a fleeting feeling of traveling back in time.
