Gustave Caillebotte

Painter of modern Paris — sweeping perspectives, rain-soaked streets, and quiet bourgeois interiors. Independently wealthy, Caillebotte was as important to Impressionism as a patron and organizer as he was as an artist; he funded exhibitions, paid Monet's rent, and built up the collection that, on his death, became the foundation of the French state's Impressionist holdings now at the Musée d'Orsay. His own canvases sit slightly apart from the movement: tighter drawing, more architectural composition, and an interest in working men — floor-scrapers, oarsmen, gardeners — that his colleagues mostly ignored.