Self-Portrait with an Easel

Caillebotte was 31 when he painted this in 1879, and he shows himself at the easel in his own apartment on the boulevard Haussmann, where he lived with his brother Martial. Look past him at the wall. That large canvas behind his shoulder is Renoir's Bal du moulin de la Galette, the crowded Montmartre dance scene, and it hung there because Caillebotte owned it. He had money, and he spent it buying his friends' pictures when almost nobody else would, which is a large part of why so many Impressionist works survive in French public collections today. It was also the first of his self-portraits to show himself actually at work, brush in hand, in the real room where he painted.