Analysis of Caillebotte's painting "Paris Street; Rainy Day" (Extra Portfolio Task)

Gustav Caillebotte’s painting “Paris Street; Rainy Day” (1877) depicts people strolling down Haussman’s boulevards in the rain. Fashion had become a status symbol which now divided the classes.'One of the first industries to flourish was luxury fabrics..' (Johnston, 2007). In this image you can tell that these people are upper class from their clothes, the males shiny top hats and tailored suits. The couple in the foreground are referred to as ‘Flaneur’s’ which was the term used for rich people that walked around the city in order to experience modernity. The overall painting resembles a photograph as the image is cropped, cutting out half the man on the right side of the image. It doesn’t look staged or set up using models, it looks like a photo that captured a moment in time. Paintings began to use the cropping technique a lot as cameras became popular.

Bibliography

• Johnston, R. (2007) 'Parisian Architecture of the Belle Epoque', West Sussex, John Wiley & Sons Ltd