In 1877 and 1878, Gustave Caillebotte made a number of pictures of swimmers, oarsmen and rowers near his family’s estate in Yerres, a small town southeast of Paris that had already attracted the artistic attentions of Édouard Manet and Claude Monet. An active yachtsman and recent participant in the Impressionist exhibitions, Caillebotte was clearly drawn to a subject that enabled him to experiment with the fleeting effects of rippling water and reflected light. Canoe on the Yerres River appears to be unfinished, but it may have served as a study for a related painting entitled Skiffs, now in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Both paintings reveal the artist’s fascination with perspective, as the canoer’s radically foreshortened limbs and oddly obscured face draw attention to the conditions of seeing rather than the reality of appearance.
Details
- Artist Name: Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848-1894)
- Title: Skiff on the Yerres River
- Date: c. 1877
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 25-7/8 x 31-7/8 in. (65.7 x 81.0 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Art Foundation, from the Estate of Jennifer Jones Simon
- Accession Number: M.2010.1.238.P
- Copyright: © Norton Simon Art Foundation
Object Information
Private Collection, Paris.
Pauline K. Cave (sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 16 November 1984, lot 13, ill., to);
Norton Simon, by bequest to;
Jennifer Jones Simon Art Trust, to;
Norton Simon Art Foundation.
The Lure of the Water: Impressionists at the Seashore
- Norton Simon Museum, 1993-07-01 to 1993-10-10
A Revolution of the Palette: The First Synthetic Blues and their Impact on French Artists
- Norton Simon Museum, 2015-07-17 to 2016-01-04
- Berhaut, Marie, Caillebotte: Sa vie et son oeuvre, 1978, no. 94 p. 114
- Wittmer, Pierre, Caillebotte and His Garden at Yerres, 1991, p. 164
- Brettell, Richard R. and Stephen F. Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art in the Norton Simon Museum, volume 1, 2006,
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. 1714 p. 438
- Michael Marrinan, Gustave Caillebotte: Painting the Paris of Naturalism, 1872-1887, 2016, fig. 78 pp. 164-165, 177 (n. 100), 360, 378, 387 ; p. 165 (ill.)
- Christie's, Christie's London: Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, 2017, p. 91 (ill.)
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