Wäschetrocknen am Ufer der Seine, Petit-Gennevilliers

The Caillebotte people usually know is the man who painted wide, wet Paris boulevards full of top hats and umbrellas. This is the other Caillebotte. By 1892 he had largely left the city behind, settling across the Seine at Petit Gennevilliers, where he gardened, built boats, and sailed. Here he paints nothing grander than white sheets hung out to dry, snapping in the wind by the water. It was a motif he came back to several times in his last years, one of a small group of laundry pictures. He was still in his early 40s, and within two years he was dead, in 1894, with this quiet riverside world among the last things he set down.