“Man at the Window” – Gustave Caillebotte
by richibi
“Man at the Window” (1875)
Gustave Caillebotte
__________
it’s hard not to think of Caspar David Friedrich (1818) or
Norman Rockwell (1962) upon viewing now this painting,
which came up today in a lecture I was viewing on the
between both
they are, all three of course, all about contemplation,
but all explore a different aspect of that phenomenon
let me suggest that Friedrich‘s concerns are patently
metaphysical, he casts his eyes, which we do not see,
incidentally, upon a horizon that looks like destiny,
ours by extension, murky yet imbued with possibility,
even the improbable
or maybe this is just what I see
Rockwell‘s perspective is instead aesthetic, a view
of the world as expressed by others, the capacity to
understand and relate to other voices, opinions, within
our social construct, allegorized here by the exhibition
room
it is a closed speculation, circumscribed by the limited
dimensions, physical or conceptual, of any other
counterpart, contained therefore metaphorically, and
concisely, within a frame
that frame represents the physical limits imposed on
a painter, but also the conceptual limitations of the
viewer him- or herself, it works both ways, for some
this will be a man merely looking out a window, for
others an opening on an epoch
Caillebotte, 1848-1894, looks inward to his isolation,
alienation, from his luxurious interior, black as a cave,
upon a confined avenue where nothing but an impossible
communication, with the lone woman crossing the
street, surely a furtive eye, gives way necessarily to
resignation, and a kind of existential yield to ineluctable
fate, a sensibility beginning to burgeon at the time, see
Nietzsche, 1844-1900, and nihilism
then again this is only my impression, this is what I got
and a picture is worth, we say, a thousand words
Richard
Richibi's Weblog 
The man in the painting is Gustave’s younger brother, René. The house is located at 77, rue de Miromesnil and is only 3 blocks from the Caillebotte’s third cousin, Paul Pinson de Valpinçon. It was this Paul who grew up in Paris as a lifelong friend of Edgar Degas, and thru whom Gustave and Edgar met. It was Paul’s grandfather who bought the Chateau at Menil-Hubert (in Normandie) where Degas visited and painted for many years. It is also this Pinson de Valpinçon side of the family thru whom Gustave met Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. It was Paul’s grandfather, René Pinson de Valpinçon, to whom Ingres gave his 1808 painting, the Grand Bather, as they were friends. The Pinson de Valpinçon’s later gave the painting to France and it now hangs in the Louvre, and is now called “The Valpinçon Bather”. My 2nd great-grandmother was Marie Pinson de Valpinçon, and was the sister of René Pinson de Valpinçon, making my grandfather, Paul de Launay, a 2nd cousin of Paul Pinson de Valpinçon and 3rd cousin of Gustave (and his brothers, although Alfred was related quite uniquely – story for another time). The chateau at Menil-Hubert stayed in the family from 1822 until 1974. There is more history on my family blog. Thank you for your appreciation of Gustave’s paintings.