A painting by Caillebotte classified as a “national treasure” entered the Musée d’Orsay
The Ministry of Culture announced on Monday that “The Boat Party by Gustave Caillebotte, acquired thanks to the patronage of LVMH, joins the Paris museum.
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Lth table The Boat Party by Gustave Caillebotte, classified as a “national treasure”, joined the Musée d’Orsay on Monday, January 30, which will organize in 2024 a major exhibition dedicated to the impressionist painter, underestimated and poorly represented in France . For the first time, this painting obtained thanks to the sponsorship of the luxury group LVMH will also be exhibited in several French museums, as part of a national celebration around the 150th anniversary of Impressionism scheduled for in 2024.
This time, exceptional loans to twenty museums will promote masterpieces of this movement. A major Caillebotte exhibition will close this Orsay event in the fall of 2024, the Ministry of Culture announced on Monday.
“Born in France, Impressionism conquered the world and found enormous popular success, which continues to grow. Thanks to the exclusive patronage of LVMH, I am delighted that this masterpiece will enrich the country’s heritage and be presented in several cities in France,” said Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak. “This is the first time that such a tour will be organized for a ‘national treasure'”, she underlined.
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Jean-Paul Claverie, advisor to Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, for his part was delighted that “one of the last masterpieces of Impressionism still in private hands” remains in France and came to enrich the collections from at the Musée d’Orsay. The artist, passionate about boating, created this painting in 1878, also called The boater in the top hat.
500 personal works and numerous donations to the French State
It represents an elegantly dressed man rowing a river in Île-de-France, Yerres, also the name of a town in Essonne where his family owned property. The work was classified as a “national treasure” in January 2020, a status granted to cultural property of great importance for national heritage – whether from the perspective of history, art or archaeology. – and justifying special protection, particularly in terms of exports.
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Famous for his views of Paris, friend of Renoir and Monet, Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), from a rich background, was able to devote himself to painting without worrying about money and helping his friends. Died at 45, the artist left about 500 personal works and a collection of Renoir, Monet, Manet and other Cézannes, which he donated to the French state.
Another of his works is classified as a national treasure, young man at his windowwas purchased in November 2021 for $53 million by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, breaking the auction record for an increasingly highly rated French painter.
A figure of impressionism
Caillebotte’s figure as a collector and donor has long overshadowed the importance of his work as a painter, which was gradually forgotten from the end of the 19th century.e century and recognized by art history only in the second half of the XXe century.
A retrospective organized by the Musée d’Orsay was dedicated to him at the Grand Palais in 1994, while the last exhibition in Paris, at the Musée Jacquemart-André in 2011, no longer presented him as “friend of the Impressionists”, but as a central figure in the art movement.
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French national collections to date include only fourteen works by Gustave Caillebotte. Along with Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, he remains one of the least represented Impressionist artists in French public collections. In comparison, the Musée d’Orsay has eleven paintings by Caillebotte, but 33 by Manet, 39 by Degas, 45 by Pissarro, 82 by Renoir and 88 by Monet.
