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Lot Essay
Painted with a careful attention to detail, Gustave Caillebotte’s intimate floral still lifes stand as a powerful testament to the artist’s enduring fascination with horticulture and the natural world. While Caillebotte turned his attention to the subject repeatedly throughout his career, it is in the Impressionist painter’s richly worked compositions from 1881 onwards that the impact of his evolving interest in gardening and the cultivation of plants was fully revealed. Created in 1883, Lilas dans un vase is a captivating example of Caillebotte’s mature meditations on the fleeting beauty of flowers in bloom, centered on the delicate, richly colored blossoms of a bunch lilacs. Gathered together in an informal arrangement, the flowers appear freshly cut, perhaps brought in from the garden and hastily placed in the nearest available vase, so that the artist could immediately embark upon studying them before they began to wilt. Last seen at public exhibition in 1986, shortly before it was purchased by Fritz and Lucy Jewett, the painting has remained a cherished part of their collection for the last three and a half decades.
In 1881, Caillebotte had purchased a house with his brother Martial in Petit Gennevilliers, a suburban enclave directly across the Seine from Argenteuil and just a short train journey from Paris. It was here that Caillebotte’s passion for flowers and gardening truly flourished, as he transformed the grounds into an idyllic array of formal and informal gardens filled with a broad range of plants, flowers and trees that were each carefully chosen and cultivated by the artist and his team of gardeners. As Pierre Wittmer has noted, “The garden at Petit Gennevilliers became a horticultural laboratory and an artist’s studio, where the experimental propagation of plants provided the subject matter for paintings which recorded the passage of the seasons” (“Note on Caillebotte as an Horticulturalist,” Gustave Caillebotte, The Unknown Impressionist, exh. cat., The Royal Academy, London, 1996, pp. 204-205). In particular, flowers took on a new prominence in Caillebotte’s paintings during these years, inspired by the myriad varietals that bloomed within the grounds at Petit Gennevilliers, from lilacs and hyacinths in the spring, to roses, dahlias and daisies in the summer, and the exotic orchids that Caillebotte nurtured in the greenhouse he constructed on the property.
His growing interest in horticulture granted Caillebotte a deeper understanding and insight into the nuances and variations of his floral subjects, from the particular shape of a peony, to the range of hues within a cluster of chrysanthemums. In Lilas dans un vase Caillebotte conveys the sensuality and delicacy of the conical clusters of lilac blossoms as they tumble over the edge of the vase, their colorful petals punctuated by sprigs of green foliage rendered in quick, flowing strokes of the artist’s brush. In contrast, Caillebotte captures the texture of the individual lilac flowers through short, staccato touches of pigment, overlapping and interweaving his brushstrokes to create a rich, impastoed tapestry of soft purples and blues, deep pinks, reds, and a variety of cream tones. This concentrated study of the different textures continues across the canvas—from the distinct smoothness of the blue porcelain vase, conjured through the application of bold streaks of white paint to indicate the play of light across its surface, to the sumptuous material of the red tablecloth, which appears to be a silk or satin finish—with each element showcasing not only Caillebotte’s skills of observation, but also his increasingly experimental, fresh approach to brushwork at this time.
Caillebotte’s interest in painting still lifes through the early 1880s may have also been influenced by his close friendship with Claude Monet during these years, which was based as much on their mutual passion for gardening as on their shared artistic endeavors. Traces of their love of flowers and interest in horticulture filled their correspondence—in various letters Monet invited Caillebotte to come visit him in Giverny when his irises had bloomed, requested advice on vendors of perennials, reported on an exhibition of flowers that he had seen in Paris, and described a shipment of rare Japanese plants that he had received from Belgium. When Caillebotte purchased Monet’s 1880 canvas Chrysanthèmes rouges shortly after its completion, the vibrant depiction of the riotous bunch of red blooms may have sparked his own renewed interest in painting floral subjects. Indeed, there are a number of similarities in the tone and compositional arrangement between Monet’s composition and Lilas dans un vase, though Caillebotte’s smaller, more condensed bouquet and simplified arrangement allowed him to achieve a more nuanced study of the flowers.
In 1881, Caillebotte had purchased a house with his brother Martial in Petit Gennevilliers, a suburban enclave directly across the Seine from Argenteuil and just a short train journey from Paris. It was here that Caillebotte’s passion for flowers and gardening truly flourished, as he transformed the grounds into an idyllic array of formal and informal gardens filled with a broad range of plants, flowers and trees that were each carefully chosen and cultivated by the artist and his team of gardeners. As Pierre Wittmer has noted, “The garden at Petit Gennevilliers became a horticultural laboratory and an artist’s studio, where the experimental propagation of plants provided the subject matter for paintings which recorded the passage of the seasons” (“Note on Caillebotte as an Horticulturalist,” Gustave Caillebotte, The Unknown Impressionist, exh. cat., The Royal Academy, London, 1996, pp. 204-205). In particular, flowers took on a new prominence in Caillebotte’s paintings during these years, inspired by the myriad varietals that bloomed within the grounds at Petit Gennevilliers, from lilacs and hyacinths in the spring, to roses, dahlias and daisies in the summer, and the exotic orchids that Caillebotte nurtured in the greenhouse he constructed on the property.
His growing interest in horticulture granted Caillebotte a deeper understanding and insight into the nuances and variations of his floral subjects, from the particular shape of a peony, to the range of hues within a cluster of chrysanthemums. In Lilas dans un vase Caillebotte conveys the sensuality and delicacy of the conical clusters of lilac blossoms as they tumble over the edge of the vase, their colorful petals punctuated by sprigs of green foliage rendered in quick, flowing strokes of the artist’s brush. In contrast, Caillebotte captures the texture of the individual lilac flowers through short, staccato touches of pigment, overlapping and interweaving his brushstrokes to create a rich, impastoed tapestry of soft purples and blues, deep pinks, reds, and a variety of cream tones. This concentrated study of the different textures continues across the canvas—from the distinct smoothness of the blue porcelain vase, conjured through the application of bold streaks of white paint to indicate the play of light across its surface, to the sumptuous material of the red tablecloth, which appears to be a silk or satin finish—with each element showcasing not only Caillebotte’s skills of observation, but also his increasingly experimental, fresh approach to brushwork at this time.
Caillebotte’s interest in painting still lifes through the early 1880s may have also been influenced by his close friendship with Claude Monet during these years, which was based as much on their mutual passion for gardening as on their shared artistic endeavors. Traces of their love of flowers and interest in horticulture filled their correspondence—in various letters Monet invited Caillebotte to come visit him in Giverny when his irises had bloomed, requested advice on vendors of perennials, reported on an exhibition of flowers that he had seen in Paris, and described a shipment of rare Japanese plants that he had received from Belgium. When Caillebotte purchased Monet’s 1880 canvas Chrysanthèmes rouges shortly after its completion, the vibrant depiction of the riotous bunch of red blooms may have sparked his own renewed interest in painting floral subjects. Indeed, there are a number of similarities in the tone and compositional arrangement between Monet’s composition and Lilas dans un vase, though Caillebotte’s smaller, more condensed bouquet and simplified arrangement allowed him to achieve a more nuanced study of the flowers.