My knowledge of art and art history is essentially zero. But, I know what I like and I LOVE the Impressionists. Manet and Bonnard being at the top of my list. It blows my mind that this group of artists were considered wild and boundary breakers, revolutionaries! I’d not heard of Caillebotte until last week when someone mentioned his work “Les raboteurs” (if you are unfamiliar look it up! Stunning, provocative, remarkable). Then I found a new book on NetGalley from the Getty Collection and they gave me an early review copy! What luck. He’s now at the top of my list. A tie-in with a new exhibition of his work featuring males, this book examines in-depth his large attention to works featuring men. It’s fascinating to try and dissect what an artist was doing, using what was happening culturally and politically at the time, while also discussing our modern attitudes towards the male figure in art. I devoured every word, mesmerizing! Much like the paintings here. Caillebotte’s men are often depicted facing away from the viewer, but his portraits, at least to me, have an energy, their subjects all seeming to have a knowing that you are watching them and should desire them. One of his most famous (now) and controversial (then) works is off a man dying off after a bath. It’s unavoidable that the audience can’t intimately gaze at the man’s bottom. There’s much discussion of what he was trying to achieve, and why it was so shocking. It’s quite fun and a little frustrating that we’ll never know.

I can’t wait to catch this exhibition in Paris, it’s also coming to LA and Chicago in 2025. This is one of my top books for 2024!

I found the book to be very informative. It is quite dense with information. I also appreciated the inclusion of artworks to compare and contrast with Caillebotte's, because it provides additional context for his art. I did find the ebook version unwieldy to read. I don't normally read books like this, so I was wondering so many of the catalogue items referenced weren't embedded in the text. Apparently you're supposed to flip back and forth. If this is to be published as an ebook on Kindle or other e-readers, it would make sense to make each reference to a catalogue item a hyperlink.