Flowerbed, Garden at Petit Gennevilliers

By 1884 Gustave Caillebotte had mostly stepped away from the Paris art world he had done so much to hold together. For years his money helped fund the Impressionist exhibitions and filled his own walls with paintings by Monet, Renoir and Degas. Then he crossed the Seine to Petit-Gennevilliers, a quiet spot near Argenteuil, and gave himself over to two things he loved: sailing and gardening. This close view of a flowerbed comes straight out of that second passion. He was 36, planting and tending the beds himself, and he painted them from just a step away, so the blossoms crowd the whole canvas with barely any sky or path to steady the eye. Flowers would take up more and more of his work over the following decade, around the same years his friend Monet was turning a garden at Giverny into a lifelong subject. The picture is small, about 61 by 47 centimeters, oil on canvas, and it stayed in private hands rather than hanging in a museum.