Pintores de casas

In the spring of 1877 Caillebotte put on the third Impressionist exhibition, rented the rooms, paid most of the bills and hung this canvas among them. The subject came from his own neighbourhood. The rue de Lisbonne was one of the streets cut through that quarter by Baron Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris, and the men on the ladders are repainting the front of a wine merchant's shop in a district still finishing itself. Caillebotte gives workmen the room a history painter would give a battle, and the fresh shopfront and the receding street get as much attention as the figures. The picture then stayed in the family for close to a century, passing to his brother Martial and afterwards to Martial's daughter, and it remained in private hands until 2023, when its owners placed it on long-term deposit at the Musee d'Orsay.