For the first time, this painting acquired 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 2024.
On this occasion, exceptional loans to some twenty museums will promote the masterpieces of this movement.
A major Caillebotte exhibition will close this event in Orsay in the fall of 2024, the French Ministry of Culture announced on Monday.
Jean-Paul Claverie, adviser 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 comes to enrich the collections. of the Musee d'Orsay.
The painter, passionate about boating, had produced this painting in 1878, also called "The boater in the top hat".
It represents an elegantly dressed man rowing on a river in Ile-de-France, the Yerres, also the name of a town in Essonne where his family owned a property.
- "Friend of the Impressionists"
The work had been classified as a "national treasure" in January 2020, a status granted to cultural property of major importance for the national heritage - whether from the point of view of history, art or archeology. - and justifying special protection, particularly in terms of export.
Famous for his views of Paris, friend of Renoir and Monet, Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), from a wealthy background, was able to devote himself to painting without worrying about money and helping his friends.
Died at 45, the artist left some 500 personal works and a collection of Renoir, Monet, Manet and other Cézanne, which he donated to the French state.
Another of his works classified as a national treasure, "Young man at his window", was bought in November 2021 for 53 million dollars by the Getty museum in Los Angeles, smashing the auction record for the increasingly popular French painter. .
The figure of Caillebotte as collector and donor has long concealed the importance of his work as a painter, gradually forgotten from the end of the 19th century and recognized only by the history of art during the second half of the 20th 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, presented him no longer as the "friend of the Impressionists" but as a central figure in the art movement.
The French national collections to date only included fourteen works by Gustave Caillebotte.
Along with Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, he remains one of the least well-represented Impressionist artists in French public collections.
By 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.
© 2023 AFP