Autoritratto

By 1892 Gustave Caillebotte had mostly stepped away from the Paris art world. The wealthy engineer's son had spent the 1870s and 80s not only painting but quietly buying his friends' work, filling his walls with the Monets, Renoirs and Degas that other collectors wouldn't touch. Now in his 40s he lived downriver at Petit Gennevilliers, gardening and building racing boats. He looks out here with close-cropped hair and a plain jacket, unsmiling, a man who takes things seriously. He died suddenly two years later, at 45, and the collection he left to the French state, grudgingly accepted, became one of the foundations of the Impressionist rooms at the Musée d'Orsay.