Was caillebotte gay

To understand the homosexual

Caillebotte was a model for Renoir's painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party. Although he never married, Caillebotte appears to have had a serious relationship with Charlotte Berthier, a woman eleven years his junior and of the lower class, to whom he left a sizeable annuity. But, one can also credit the advance of modern art to a presumably gay man, Gustave Caillebotte, a lesser-known impressionist artist of the period.

The MAM collection has one of his many paintings of canoeists on the River Yerres. People now believe that Gustave might have been gay or bisexual. Gustave Caillebotte never married, and some of his paintings—such as his famous painting The Floor Scrapers, left, and the nude Man at His Bath —show a strong appreciation for the male form. Though I have read nothing in his biography to explicitly suggest that Caillebotte might have been homosexual, to look at his paintings and not pose this question seems absurdly myopic.

As well as promoting a new modern ideal of virile masculinity that was deeply informed by his historical circumstances, social media and gender identity, Caillebotte, in some of his most provocative works, also challenged and complicated that ideal.”. The causes behind this movement are many. Advances in the technology of art, political upheaval and shifts in the general social order may be cited.

But, one can also credit the advance of modern art to a presumably gay man, Gustave Caillebotte, a lesser-known impressionist artist of the period. And, Caillebotte was not only an artist but a very rich one. He tried to bequeath his collection of nearly 70 works to the French government but, although some were accepted, most were not. Anyway, whether he was gay or not rests in the eye of the beholder.

There are no extant love letters written to another man or revealing remarks by his contemporaries. What does exist are his paintings that almost exclusively depict male subjects: teasingly voyeuristic views of nude bathers, muscular rowers, brawny working-class types like the three shirtless parquet planers and portraits of handsome bourgeois flaneurs.

Granted, he seems to have had a mistress for a time and even left her an annuity. Still, the artist never married, was generally shunned by his relatives and lived with his mother until he was 39 he died at Today the subject is being explored by more open minds. In any case, were it not for Caillebotte, the movement may not have caught on in quite the same way. Those earliest impressionist exhibits may never have taken place, and, thanks to his own collecting, many works survive today that may have been lost Monet destroyed of his own paintings in a fit of depression—fortunately, Caillebotte had already purchased Food for thought when you see the show.

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