Caillebotte donated his works to the State. His executor, Renoir, found with great difficulty to enforce the desire of his friend, and sometimes marchante, deliver the collection of paintings to the State. Seemed inconceivable to those responsible for cultural policy present in a museum the Impressionist paintings, which at that time were, still, rejected by a large part of the public. Official site: health organizations. The Park acuchilladores Les floor parquet, 1875 oil on canvas, 102 x 146.5 cm. Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) the central theme of the painting is the representation of workmen preparing the wood floor. Critics considered it vulgar, and that was probably the reason why the work was rejected by the judges of the Salon of 1875. At that time, the Academy of art considered acceptable representation of rustic peasants or farmers as the permissible subject matter on topics related to the working class. This box is one of the earliest depictions of the urban proletariat.
In contrast to Courbet or Millet, Caillebotte does not introduce any social in his work, neither moralizing nor nor political speech. His work is simply a documentary study (gestures, tools, accessories) which places it between the artist of realism experienced. Caillebotte shows three operatives kneeling, with bare torso, on the Park in an empty room. They dominate the beige-brown-black tones. The light that enters through the door of the balcony of the Fund produces a great effect of backlight: falls on the backs and arms of the workers. The perspective is accentuated by the effect of chopping and alignment (diagonals) of the parquet boards. Some streaks are dark varnish which contrasts with other whites which have been planed. It is a study of the movements rhythmic, comparable to the ballet dancers or the horse racing of Edgar Degas.
The painter drew one parts of the box before putting them into the canvas. The Anatomy of the workers remember the gods of classical painting. One of the innovations of the Impressionists, which had already targeted the royalists, was to subvert the conventions with regard to the topics considered appropriate for a painting: against the preference for historical and mythological subjects typical of academic art, the Impressionists aspire to reflect life forms contemporary, new ways of living and new figures of a society in an accelerated process of modernization. It should be noted that within the theme of modern life, manual labor was not the favorite themes of the Impressionists. Only the own Caillebotte and Degas treat it with some frequency (the latter masterfully with its series of Ironers). We now have the opportunity to see in Spain not only the work of Gustave Caillebotte but that of many other artists under the title Impressionism, a new Renaissance presents the Mapfre Foundation. On their website you can consult the exposure data this article was published in magazine Atticus 5.