self-portrait
The French painter Gustav Kayebot was more than just an outstanding artist, philanthropist and collector. Or the genius of the French Impressionist painters.
The artist Gustav Caybot was born in Paris in August 1848 as the son of a wealthy French industrialist and judge of the Seine Trade Court. The artist's father, Martial Cayebot, owned a vast textile industry and for many years has been engaged in the supply of a variety of textiles to meet the needs of the French Army and Navy. For a long time, Martial Kayebot's personal life was tragic— his two wives died suddenly. He married for the third time. In the case of Celeste Doveline, who was twenty years younger than him. The marriage became a happy marriage and the couple had three sons. The eldest son was Gustav. René was born three years later and Martial was born two years later.
The family has two houses in Paris (the "old" house where the futuristic artist was born, on the Rue Faubourg Saint-Denis, the "new" house, on rue Miromesnil) and a picturesque and magnificent manor house 15 km south of Paris. It was in this estate that Gustav created his first painting.
He was also fascinated by the ever-changing Paris before him: the old intricate streets were transformed into wide paved boulevards, new bridges across the Seine rose from the ground, and the city was separated by sturdy steel railways.
Paris. Rainy days (rainy days in Botignols)
Paris has a different smell – fresh planks, hot metal, paint and motorcycle smoke. This is the exciting smell of the new era, the smell of great change...
In 1868, Gustav Kayerbotte graduated from the Louis the Great Academy with a law degree and a license to practice law, and became interested in engineering, but then the war began, and the descendants of a wealthy family took part in the Franco-Prussian War.
In 1871, after the war, Gustav began taking classes in his studio in Leonborn, and two years later he entered the Academy of Fine Arts, but he soon grew tired of academic painting. He was too rich to do anything. Every morning, however, he drives his luxurious carriage, loads canvases and paints into the carriage, and drives 2-3 blocks, passionately depicting the streets of neomodern Paris.
At this time, Gustav Kayebot met Edgar Degas and Giuseppe Denitis, and began to run more and more into the Café de Gerbois, a gathering place for the future Impressionists who wanted to "write about life as it was", to become one of his own artists, and to visit the exhibition in the studio of the first Impressionist painter, Nadal.
After visiting the Gustave Caillebotte exhibition, he firmly decided on his work for years to come. Renoir later wrote:
He had little dreams of his own, and he was a bit like a painting by Joan of Arc.
In 1874, the artist buried his father, and four years later his mother died. Suddenly, Gustav became a very wealthy heir who could afford to paint and didn't care at all about selling his work. Also - funding exhibitions of the Impressionists and providing material support to their artists and friends (Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Camille Pizarro, etc.), buying their works and paying the rent for the studio.
Parquet flooring
Beginning with the second exhibition of the Impressionists, Gustav Kayebot declared himself not only an equal participant with the artist, but also a patron, organizer and manager: he found and rented a hall for the exhibition, hung paintings by hand, purchased frames and, after the exhibition, without much pomp and circumstance, redeemed the paintings of artists who had not yet been recognized by the public, and let his colleagues not starve to death at all. It was then that Caybot decided to collect his own Impressionist paintings, hoping that one day the public would understand the painting, and his collection would become another ornament of the Louvre.
As for the artist Kayebot, who paints with great enthusiasm and nervousness, does not want to be recognized, does not even consider making money for his paintings, every day he tries, does not try to find his own unique style, does not recognize anyone's rules. And reserves the right to conduct endless amateur experiments.
Regarding his work, Gustav Kayebot said:
I tried to paint honestly, and it was worth hanging my painting in the hallway of the living room, where Cézanne and Renoir would also be!
As a freelance artist who could paint as he pleased, on a humble day, Gustav decided not to paint at all. This happened after the death of his brother René. The artist had a clear hunch that his life would not last long.
Gustav Cayebert made a will, according to which he transferred the entire collection of paintings to the French government, bought a comfortable house in the small town of Jean Villers, and then left Paris with his lover, the actress Charlotte Berthier.
In a new place, a new passion embraced him — a shipyard appeared next to a cozy house, and Gustav Kayebot, a very talented engineer, began building ships according to his own design — his yachts had unique shapes and ultra-modern smoothness. Soon, Gustav Kayebot's yachts were popular with yachting enthusiasts all over the world, and Gustav Kayebot himself began organizing regattas on the Coast of Normandy, and even set new rules for hosting national competitions.
Bridge of Europe
At the same time, the retired artist began collecting stamps, writing several books on philately (Gustav Kayebot's stamp collection is currently preserved in the British Museum).
Every morning, before leaving home, he would go to the garden, where countless chrysanthemums, irises, roses, orchids, and dahlias grew. He would spend an hour or two in this garden: watering, planting, pruning, and just looking at this miracle was very happy. Sometimes the desire to paint would come back to him – he picked up the canvas to paint, and then again, intensely and without any rules (life is like that), painted his magical garden.
In this garden, he eventually died. He is only 46 years old.
Died too early. This was true even for impressionists. His paintings left behind and in his collection have not been recognized by the state for many years, and just a few years after Gustav Kayerbotte's death, 38 of the 68 paintings in the collection were accepted by the Luxembourg Palace. For the rest of the paintings, the artist's heir twice proposed the inheritance to the French government, but both times were rejected. As a result, most of Gustav Kayebot's paintings were sold to the American Albert Barnes.
Fruit on the tray
The artist Gustav Kayebot was soon forgotten. His name is mentioned in books and studies, but only as a patron and collector, and was a wealthy patron and friend of almost all French Impressionist painters. So if, in the 1960s, the heirs of the artist did not decide to sell several paintings by their brilliant grandfather, this forgetting would continue. The first is the huge painting "Paris." Rainy days". The painting was purchased by the Chicago School of Painting, and as a result, interest in the forgotten name grew rapidly, art historians began to work, and Kark Varnedo, chief curator of painting and architecture, wrote an interesting book about the work of Gustav Kayebot.
Currently, forty works by Gustav Kayerbot can be seen in the Musée d'Orsay. The painting "Man on the Balcony, Haussmann Avenue" sold for $14.3 million in 2000, while "Man in the Bath" cost $17 million.
It can be said that Gustav Kayerbot's old dream has come true. He is not only recognized as an artist. His paintings were immediately taken to the Impressionist parlor and hung next to the paintings of his friends: Renoir, Monet, Cézanne and Pizarro.
Paintings by Gustav Kayebot
Rower
Balcony of the Haussmann Avenue
Orange tree
Roof covered in snow
Young man by the window
Mademoiselle Boissière knitwear
Rower wearing a top hat
Façade painter
Man on the balcony. Ottoman Avenue
Boulevard. Look at it from above
Chrysanthemum. Petit-Genville's gardens
White and yellow chrysanthemum garden of Petit Gennevilliers
A still life of an oyster
Rural portraits
The woman in front of the dresser
Sunflower. Petit-Genville's gardens
Gennevilly Plain, viewed from the slopes of Argenteuil
The Seine's view of the Pont de Bezons
Artist's House in Hyères
The bay of Argenteuil
Linen in the wind
On the banks of the Seine in Argenteuil
Rue Halevi, view from the sixth floor
Title unknown
Petit Gennevilliers, façade, southeast of the artist's studio, overlooking the garden, in spring
Hierres, Rain (Riverbank in the Rain)