Portrait of a Man

In 1881 Caillebotte and his brother Martial bought a riverside property at Petit Gennevilliers, on a wide stretch of the Seine just downstream from Paris. He was 33, he raced sailing boats, and over the following decade the water, the boats and the garden there took over most of his painting. This portrait belongs to that same year. It shows a man in a green jacket, signed and dated by the artist, and no name was ever attached to the sitter. The canvas is small, about 46 by 38 centimetres. It went into Caillebotte's estate when he died in 1894, came up for sale in Paris only in 1971, and has stayed in private hands since.