Crowds gathered in Paris in the spring of 2011 to view an exhibition devoted to the Caillebotte brothers. Visitors enjoyed an opportunity to view famous works by Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894) such as The House Painters (1877), Interior, Woman Seated (1880), and Interior, Woman at the Window (1880), as well as numerous less-known canvases (mostly drawn from private collections). More surprisingly, the exhibition introduced the amateur photography of Martial Caillebotte (1853–1910), his unknown younger brother. Exhibited here for the first time, and only recently studied in their entirety, these photographs offered a fresh perspective on familiar scenes. Indeed, visual echoes could be found throughout the exhibition of 50 paintings and nearly 150 photographs, though neither medium could be said to illustrate the other. Instead, careful curatorial choices provided a rich, satisfying exploration into both brothers’ work without implying strict symmetry or influence. Rather than an authoritative retrospective or a simple one-to-one comparison, the exhibition offered historical context, visual juxtapositions, and a good deal of fun.

While the brothers often chose similar subjects and vantage points, their goals differed dramatically. Gustave studied with Léon Bonnat, passed the entrance exam at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1873, and produced and exhibited modernist paintings with the most avant-garde artists of his time. His brother, trained as a musician, took up the newly accessible medium of photography in 1891. He often made surprising instant images with the latest equipment, but he never sought more than amateur status. His photographs, often pasted into albums as was the custom at the time, remained family mementoes. Perhaps it was this “souvenir” status that led Serge Lemoine and his curatorial team to group photographs by theme and exhibit them as modern prints. This choice allowed them to co-exist alongside the paintings without insisting on issues of “high” art. It may also explain why the question of photography’s influence on Impressionism—so inevitable in this kind of exhibition—seemed secondary.

In her essay in the catalogue, Anne de Mondenard (Head of Photographic Collections at the Médiathèque de l’Architecture and Patrimoine) compiled a detailed overview of the literature from the past forty years addressing the parallels between photography and painting. It is a helpful essay, but fails to account for some of the more groundbreaking discussions of the question, including Kirk Varnedoe’s “The Artifice of Candor: Impressionism and Photography Reconsidered” (Art in America 68 [June 1980]: 96–110). Varnedoe challenged the notion that Impressionist artists had been directly influenced by photography, arguing for a more subtle reading of “photographic vision” in the late nineteenth century. The exhibition organizers, however, appeared to intentionally ignore the questions he raised, or, at the very least, to push them aside. After all, they suggested, these photographs did not inspire these paintings because Martial did not begin producing photographs until 1891, well after the completion of his brother’s most daring compositions. An excellent text by Julien Faure-Conorton in the catalogue places Martial’s photographic practice firmly within the context of amateur photography of the time and explains specific and varied ways that Martial paid homage to his brother’s paintings. Could Martial have been inspired by Gustave? Photography by painting?

Through five thematic groupings, the exhibition traced the brothers’ independent yet overlapping interests and subjects. In the first section, “Paris en perspectives,” bourgeois Parisian men lean over balconies to view the Haussmanized boulevards below. The cream-colored, flattened, and simplified Un refuge, boulevard Haussmann (ca. 1880) and the japaniste Boulevard Seen from Above (ca. 1880) are strong paintings with vertiginous points of view. Flattened and decorative, both works point to Gustave’s Impressionist affiliation. Martial’s photographs in this section seem, at first, merely documents for comparison. His men and women on balconies recall his brother’s pictures, and his downward-looking images of Parisian streets lack the dynamic compositions his brother had produced ten years earlier. The photographs record Paris as it appeared; the paintings provide a modernist vision. Gustave also depicted the working class, but few works in the exhibition demonstrate this interest. A strong exception is The House Painters (1877) with its dramatic perspective. It shows workmen looking at, though not actually decorating, a storefront. Martial’s banal street-level views of Parisian monuments, also in this section, resemble picture postcards. They are no less interesting, however, because like old postcards, they show familiar places through a historical lens. Not framed individually as works of art, the photographs invite close study but do not compete with the larger paintings nearby.

The second section, “Dans l’intimité des Caillebotte,” invited visitors into the private world of the brothers and their family through psychological portraits and interior scenes. A certain vision of late nineteenth-century Parisian high society emerges, with details of domestic life rendered and scrutinized: a bathroom with modern faucets, servants attending the table, married couples sitting quietly in sitting rooms. These scenes show the comfort of the wealthy but also the unspoken codes, tensions, and confinements of their class. Gustave depicted self-absorbed figures reading or relaxing in apartments. Martial recorded domestic rituals in his home (he shaves; his wife puts their son to bed; he plays the piano; she poses with her daughter). He made use of the latest technology, consciously posed himself and his family members, and recorded the life of leisure he enjoyed. The cramped but sumptuous gallery spaces in the Musée Jacquemart-André aptly suited this chapter devoted to interior space. The former mansion built in 1875 on the Boulevard Haussmann exemplifies the kinds of domestic interior spaces painted by Gustave and photographed by Martial.

A spectacular painting by Gustave in this section had appeared in the fifth exhibition of the Impressionists in 1880: Interior, Woman at the Window (1880). At that time, most critics denounced the picture, but novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans praised it as “simply a masterpiece” and the subject as “extremely ordinary,” “a moment of contemporary life” among wealthy Parisians (Joris-Karl Huysmans, L’art moderne, 1883; as cited in Charles F. Moffett, The New Painting: Impressionism, 1874–1886, San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1986, 319; see also a detailed analysis of the picture by Michael Fried, “Caillebotte’s Impressionism,” Representations 66 [Spring 1999]: 1–51). The painting depicts a woman seen from behind, standing at a window. To her right sits a man with his head bent over her newspaper; presumably, he is her husband. Physically close but psychologically distant, the couple is frozen in the inactivity of a leisurely afternoon. Lace curtains framing the central female figure protect and confine her. A building with large letters blocks the view out the window, adding to the flattened picture plane. More significant and mysterious, there is a person just barely visible in a window on the other side of the street. Has the woman gone to the window purposefully to see him or her—or is it, more likely, a chance encounter?

In a photograph in this section, Martial depicted his wife in her bath. He seemed more interested in the bathtub equipped with running water than in eroticism. Her face, turned slightly away from the camera carries a dour expression, lacking secduction. In turn, a slight hint of white at her collar suggests she has stepped into the bath with her shirt or slip on, hiding her body for this staged scene of daily life. Gustave shared with Martial this interest in everyday, seemingly ordinary moments of life at home among the Parisian bourgeois class, and the complex psychological component so often discussed in Gustave’s paintings can be found also in Martial’s photographs. In both their works, the realms of public and private (outdoors and indoors) are distinct and coded spaces.

In section 3, “Les plaisirs du jardin,” Martial’s photographs overflow with joie de vivre. The garden is a space for work, but also for simple childhood pleasures, like pulling a wagon or licking huge spoonfuls of freshly prepared fruit jam. There are also depictions of Gustave in his garden at Petit Gennevilliers. Wearing wooden sabots and a sailing cap, he differs dramatically from his Parisian self, attired in top hat and overcoat. Here is his “other” persona, away from the art world, where gardening and sailing take up his time and energy. Gustave’s flower paintings in this section are evidence not only of his intense enthusiasm for horticulture but also of his friendship with Claude Monet, the quintessential painter-gardener of the day. Monet, too, imagined flowered panels to decorate his home.

In the “Paysage moderne” section, photography dominated. Martial captured automobiles, trains, factories, and bridges, and in the process reveals a keen vision of the technological changes marking his world. While Gustave’s famous Le pont de l’Europe (1876) is missing, rarely seen studies of the work demand careful attention. And in the final section, “Au fil de l’eau,” the exhibition evoked the Caillebotte brothers’ passion for sailing. Gustave competed in regatas, designed his own boats, and was President of the “Cercle de la voile de Paris.” His brother shared this enthusiasm. Photographs and paintings represent specific boats (including those named light-heartedly by Gustave Roastbeef, Jack, Cul-Blanc) as well as typically Impressionist views along the banks of the Seine. Canotier au chapeau haut de forme or Oarsman in a Top Hat (1877–78) was mocked when Gustave exhibited it in 1879 because of the ridiculous top hat worn by this Sunday rower—and the surprising composition that places the viewer directly in the boat.

The installation design by Hubert Le Gall deserves special attention for its playfulness. Enlarged details of Martial’s photographs covered entire walls, flanked doorways, and served almost as wallpaper for the smaller groupings. This creative use of the photographs brought a human presence to the exhibition and to an understanding of both the famous and the lesser-known Caillebotte. An especially satisfying choice was the final wall of the exhibition where an enlarged photograph of Gustave, winding back to throw a stone into the sea, is a delightful send-off (cat. 29A). Such energy fits well with the tone of the exhibition, which carefully avoided a conflation between painting and photography, between Gustave and Martial. Instead, the exhibition enticed visitors to look closely for parallels and differences and to accept paintings and photographs on their own terms.