Portrait of Eugène Lamy

By 1888 Caillebotte had moved out of Paris for good, to Petit Gennevilliers on the Seine across from Argenteuil, and was spending his money and most of his time on boats. He designed and raced yachts, and he painted the people he sailed with. Eugène Lamy was one of them, a friend from the water who shared the yacht-building habit. Caillebotte painted him twice in these years, and Lamy's wife Blanche twice as well. The dabbed, hatched brushwork of these portraits sits close to what Renoir was doing at the same time, down to the flesh tones. Caillebotte gave the picture to Lamy, and it stayed with the family until it came up at auction in London in 1990.