ustave Caillebotte was born on August 19, 1848 on 77 Rue de Miromelnil, Paris. He grew up in one of the wealthiest parts of nineteenth-century Paris and played as a child in many of the scenes he would later paint, such as the Gare St. Lazare in Le Pont de l'Europe. After serving in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, Caillebotte decided he would pursue painting and studied under Léon Bonnat, who eventually sponsored Caillebotte's entrance into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1873. Shortly afterward, Caillebotte got involved with the Impressionists when he met Edgar Degas and agreed to display his work at the Second Impressionist Exhibition. Eventually, he would take a leadership role in several of the following Exhibitions in 1877, 1879 and 1880. Though he saw his relationship with Degas become strained in the end over leadership disagreements, Caillebotte developed many close relationships with other Impressionists like Pierre-Auguste Renoir as well, who eventually became the executor of Caillebotte's estate.
aillebotte is most known not for the things he did in life but his extraordinary collection of art he donated to the state of France upon his death in February 23, 1894. Though consisting of 38 priceless works from Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Sisley, and Monet that Caillebotte had collected throughout his lifetime, the collection's value wasn't recognized until years after his death. Even then, the Louvre would not accept the entire collection of works because of political pressure from the Salon. Now, the donation "forms the core of the Impressionist holding of the Musée d'Orsay" (Broude 66).
hough respected for his bequest, Norma Broude in her Introduction to Gustave Caillebotte and the Fashioning of Identity in Impressionist Paris writes Caillebotte's "art" was for a long time dismissed or ignored as an anomaly outside the Modernist "'mainstream' of the Impressionist style and ethos" (Broude 1). Though he received a good deal of praise from critics of his time, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, art historians generally considered Caillebotte an amateur, seeing him more as a financial supporter who happened to paint rather than a painter who happened to be rich. Shortly after his death, his name fell into obscurity. However, in 1976-1977, J. Kirk T. Varnedoe led a retrospective of Caillebotte's works, revitalizing his work and causing others to delve deeper into his paintings than before. His art gained a new appreciation with Varnedoe's ground-breaking work, and since, Caillebotte has taken his rightful place in art history with the other Impressionists.