Portrait of Jean Daurelle, Full-Length

When the Musée d'Orsay took in this canvas in 2019, it came from a small Paris flat. Marie-Jeanne Daurelle, great-granddaughter of the man in the picture, had kept it there with four other works by Caillebotte, hung like family photographs, and at her death in 2018 she left all five to the museum. Jean Daurelle had come to Paris from the provinces as a young man to go into service, and rose to majordomo, head of the household staff, for the Caillebotte family. In 1887, when Daurelle was in his late fifties, Caillebotte painted him full length in the clothes of a Paris gentleman: a black overcoat, a tall silk hat, hands clasped behind his back. The painter signed and dated it at the bottom left. By the time it was shown at the dealer Durand-Ruel's gallery in 1894, in a memorial exhibition of Caillebotte's work, both men had died, and it was listed under a wrong title, Portrait of M. T. B.