Gustave Caillebotte

Gustave Caillebotte could afford to paint whatever he liked. Born in 1848 into a rich Parisian family, he never needed to sell a picture, and he spent part of his fortune buying the work of friends the art establishment still dismissed, the Impressionists.

His own paintings were sharper and cooler than theirs. The Floor Scrapers of 1875 shows three shirtless workmen planing a parquet floor, one of the first serious paintings of urban labour, and Paris Street, Rainy Day of 1877 sets strolling couples under umbrellas against a wide grey intersection, built on a bold, almost photographic perspective. He also helped organise and pay for the Impressionist exhibitions.

The lasting gift came in his will. Caillebotte died in 1894, only 45, and left the French state his collection of about 68 pictures by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne and others, at a time when officials still sneered at them. After hard bargaining the government accepted 38, and in 1897 they went on public view in Paris, the first Impressionist works shown in a French state museum. Many now hang in the Musée d'Orsay.