Portrait Jules Richemont

Gustave Caillebotte came from money, trained as an engineer, and spent much of his energy holding the Impressionist group together. In 1879 he helped organize and pay for their fourth exhibition in Paris and hung a good many of his own canvases in it. Around this time he made this portrait of a man named Jules Richemont. Who Richemont was to him is not well recorded, which is often the case with Caillebotte's sitters, who came from the circle of family, friends and acquaintances he lived among rather than from paying clients. That is the quiet fact behind much of his portraiture: he painted the people already around him, plainly and without the flattery of a society painter. This canvas has stayed in private hands and is seldom seen in public.