The oil on canvas Le Jardin, painted in 1878 by Gustave Caillebotte. Four years earlier, in his will drawn up when he was just 28, the artist bequeathed his collection of Impressionist works to the French state.
Presented in the Modern and Contemporary Art sale, Le Jardin, an oil on canvas painted around 1878 by Gustave Caillebotte (€150,000 / 200,000), comes from a private European collection dedicated to late 19th and early 20th century painting. It also features works by Raoul Dufy (Calèche à Falaise, circa 1905, €300,000 / 350,000), Kees van Dongen, (Nature morte avec poupée, 1940, €180,000 / 220,000), Marie Laurencin (Jeune seigneur devant son palais, 1932, €40,000 / 60,000) and Maurice Utrillo (La place du Tertre à Montmartre, circa 1920-1922, €100,000 / 150,000).
This oil on canvas, with its almost photographic framing, is a real eye-opener. The brightly colored flowers in the foreground are as if blurred, just captured by a quick brushstroke. The latter, lined with trees and vegetation in incalculable shades of green, further reinforces the impression of reverie.
The year 2024 marks the 130th anniversary of Gustave Caillebotte's death, celebrated by an exhibition entitled “Caillebotte, Peindre les hommes” at the Musée d'Orsay. It's also the anniversary of the bequest of the “contemporary” art collection of the artist who, throughout his life, bought works from artists he befriended. In 1894, forty paintings by Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Millet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley joined the national collections, not without some difficulty (there were originally 70 of them). In 1897, the Caillebotte Room was inaugurated at the Musée du Luxembourg, then known as the Musée des Artistes Vivants. Thanks to Caillebotte, Impressionism had its first museum exhibition in France.
