Global Breaking News - Sunday, May 5, 2024

In his masterpiece, Paris Street Rainy Day, Gustave Caillebotte brought an unusual monumentality and compositional control to a typical Impressionist subject, the new boulevards that were changing the Paris cityscape. The result is at once real and contrived, casual and choreographed. With its curiously detached figures, the canvas depicts the anonymity that the boulevards seemed to create.

The painting shows the view from the eastern side of the rue de Turin, looking north towards the Place de Dublin. The neoclassical buildings reflect the construction works of Baron Haussmann. Three roads are visible on the northern side of the square: the rue de Moscou (left), the rue Clapeyron (center), and the continuation of the rue de Turin (right). The square is also crossed at an angle by the rue de Saint-Pétersbourg, suggested by the line of the buildings to the left and a break in the buildings to the right. The arrangement of the roads and the buildings allows Caillebotte to use two-point perspective.