An Impressionist Exploration of Male Sensuality
CHICAGO — The Impressionist artists working in France in the 1800s clearly liked women. While landscapes and still lifes studded their oeuvres, they turned repeatedly to the subjects of dancers, opera singers, boaters, bathers, strollers, book readers, barmaids, and picturesque, rosy-cheeked gals in fashionable gowns and big hats. Male painters found the female form not only tantalizing but a symbol of modernity, as women explored new social access and fashions. They felt that being artists gave them license to peer (or leer).
Only recently have art historians shed light on another, lesser-known Impressionist artist, Gustave Caillebotte, whose contrarian gaze primarily focused on men and the male body. A major exhibition of his work that originated at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris is now on view at the Art Institute of Chicago. The midwestern museum chose to change the show’s title from the original Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men to the less definitive Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World. Both are apt.
The show, to its credit, does not speculate on Caillebotte’s sexuality, but rather floats intrigue: Why did this artist choose to focus on the male body? The question teases the viewer by way of wall labels that identify his models as bachelors and note that he lived out of wedlock with a woman, with little known about the nature of their relationship. She is listed as “friend” in census data. The show charts Caillebotte’s path from Paris haute bourgeois life to a country home along the Seine where a coterie of male friends frequently visited. Here, plein-air painting, yachting, and gardening occupied him until his death at age 45. These facts function to keep the audience scrutinizing the paintings like detectives searching for evidence of homoerotic desire (or not). The AIC’s Gloria Groom, who co-curated the show, stated declaratively in the French newspaper Le Figaro, “His subject matter is radical during the time because men were not supposed to stare at men, and he’s staring at men.”
The most riveting painting in the exhibition, “Man at his Bath” (1884), portrays a well-built, naked man from the back as he towels his upper torso. His pale buttocks are tinged with pink after the hot soak. The masculine stance of splayed feet allows for the painterly definition of each leg. A nightshirt or towel occupies the floor in the foreground with his shoes near a chair holding folded clothing. Wet footprints mark his trail, bringing an immediacy to the scene. Compare this to Edgar Degas’s many female bathers, who bend, turn, and scrub in awkward poses that are far less sexy. The composition suggests that someone is watching — it’s the lingering gaze of the artist. Caillebotte was a friend and collector of Pierre-Auguste Renoir; one wonders if this is a “cheeky” response to paintings in Caillebotte’s collection, such as “The Swing” (1876), that depict pink-cheeked maidens. In the same room, his only female nude, “Nude on a Couch” (c. 1880), shows an unidealized, thin woman reclining, with clothes piled around. Everything except her face is carefully rendered, including pubic hair and pale skin. The light is specific, from a nearby window. The painting’s unembellished, private immediacy feels unique to the time period.
A less-finished painting nearby, “Man Drying his Leg” (1884), reveals a greater Degas influence. Here, the same model sits naked in a chair, his leg resting on the edge of the bath as he towels himself. While the beauty of the body has classical echoes, the intimate domestic scene feels voyeuristic. There is no distanced allegorical or mythological overlay, nor any type of Jacques-Louis David “Death of Marat” (1793) heroism.
Beyond the obviously seductive works, the show focuses broadly on men being collegial, hanging out on balconies above Boulevard Haussmann, boating, playing cards, shooting pool, reading the paper, smoking pipes — patrician pursuits. Within this top-hat-and-tails milieu, the artist also notably casts his eye toward laborers. Caillebotte’s most famous painting, “Floor Scrapers” (1875), presents three shirtless men kneeling on a wood floor (the artist’s studio), using tools to remove the finish. Their extended arms form an elegant geometry against the horizontal wainscoting on the back wall. Included in the exhibition are individual preparatory sketches of arms, hands, and orientations of the body. Intense planning went into this painting, from the light pooling on the floor to the kneeling, arched rigor of the men.