preview

Analysis Of Gustave Caillebotte 's Paris Street

Decent Essays

The general understanding of subjects in Impressionist paintings are often linked to a new representation of a newfound modernized society. Beyond modernization in the nineteenth century Impressionist paintings also discloses the newer economic and social state of that time: Capitalism. By the mid-1800s people were divided into various classes, the most popular being the upper class bourgeoisie and the working class proletariat. Industrialization increased the lust for commodities, which in turn overburdened the working class. The division between status and wealth induced strong social effects at the time, which resulted in a new sense of isolation.
Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day begun production in 1876 and was finished early in 1877, showing a flaneur’s-eye view of an ordinary slice of bourgeois life. The painting shared spotlight with Auguste Renoir’s Ball at the Moulin de la Galette, and was first exhibited along with Le Pont de L’Europe and Claude Monet’s series of the Saint-Lazare train station at the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877.
Paris Street; Rainy Day places us upon a rain-soaked sidewalk directly in front the Place de Dublin, an intersection made up of eight streets near the Gare St. Lazare. A fashionably dressed bourgeois couple who are often referred to as ‘Flaneur’s’ are the major figures in the painting as they politely avert their eyes from the viewer, seemingly unaware of what will be a collision of umbrellas with the man entering

Get Access