Caillebotte's "The Boat Party" reaches the shore of the Musée d'Orsay

A major work.

by Gustave Caillebotte, classified as a national treasure and estimated at 43 million euros, entered the Musée d'Orsay on Monday, which plans to organize in 2024 a major exhibition devoted to the impressionist painter, little represented in France.

Its acquisition, thanks to the sponsorship of the luxury group LVMH, will allow the painting to be presented to the public in several French museums, on the occasion of a national celebration around the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, scheduled for 2024.

A national tour of Impressionist works

In this respect, the works of art loaned to around twenty museums will make it possible to promote this pictorial movement which appeared in France in the 1860s. A major Caillebotte exhibition will close the event in Orsay in the fall of 2024, French Ministry of Culture.

“Born in France, Impressionism conquered the world and met with immense popular success, which continues to grow.

Thanks to the exclusive patronage of LVMH, I am delighted that this masterpiece will enrich the nation's heritage and can be presented in several cities in France,” announced the Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul-Malak.

According to him, it is for the first time that such a move of world-famous works will be organized for a “national treasure”.

The Boat Party (1878) by Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894).

Orsay Museum in #Paris @MuseeOrsay pic.twitter.com/T2bg9eMFP9

— Etienne d'Hautacam (@EdHautacam) January 29, 2023

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Jean-Paul Claverie, adviser to Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, does not hide the fact that it is a great pleasure to count "one of the last masterpieces of Impressionism still in private hands" in the collections of the Orsay Museum.

Passionate about navigation, Gustave Caillebotte had created the painting in 1878, also called

.

The work depicts an elegant man paddling on the Yerres, a river in Ile-de-France.

The same name is also used to designate a town in Essonne, where the artist's family owned a property.

Five hundred personal works and donations to the French State

The work had been considered a national treasure in January 2020. This status of honor is generally granted to cultural property of fundamental importance for the national heritage (historical, archaeological) and requiring specific protection, mainly in terms of export. .

Known for his views of Paris, friend of Renoir and Monet, Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), originally from a wealthy background, was able to devote himself to painting and help his friends financially.

Died at the age of 45, the artist left 500 personal works and a collection of Renoir, Monet, Manet and other Cézanne, which he gave to the French State.

Another national treasure of his works,

, was purchased for $53 million in November 2021 by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

The painting smashed the auction record for the increasingly popular French painter.

A figure of impressionism

Collector and donor, the figure of Caillebotte, has long masked the importance of his work as a painter.

The artist was gradually forgotten from the end of the 19th century, then recognized by the history of art only 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 Jacquemart-André museum 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.

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