Caillebotte Nude Acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Gustave Caillebotte, 1884, Man at His Bath. Oil on canvas 183 cm x 137 cm. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Just a few days ago it was revealed that the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was selling eight impressionist paintings to raise money to pay for a painting by Gustave Caillebotte. Man at His Bath, painted by Caillebotte in 1884, is widely recognised to be one of the artist’s finest pieces. The painting is the first impressionist nude in the museum’s permanent collection. But this decision of the MFA’s has vexed a few art bloggers and critics. Not everyone is happy that eight impressionist pieces have been sold for a painting of what Scot Lehigh of the Boston Globe says “is not an eye-catching celebration of the human form, a la Michelangelo’s ‘David.’ Rather, it’s an everyday view of … well, mostly of an everyday butt.”

I can not help but think Lehigh is missing a point or two. That anyone should suggest in a critical manner that Caillebotte’s painting is ‘mundane’ or ‘everyday’ has surely forgotten that that is just what the French impressionists were trying to achieve, they were rebelling against the establishment and often painted the mundane aspects of everyday life that had been rejected until then. Also, the impressionists were not interested in representing the body in its finest form ‘a la Michelangelo’ – that is just what they were fighting against.

Lehigh suggests “It’s probably not worth selling scenes by Monet, Gauguin, Sisley, Pissarro, and Renoir to acquire that perfectly mundane scene.” George T.M. Shackelford, Chair, Art of Europe and Arthur K. Solomon Curator of Modern Art at the MFA, Boston, is a little more certain, “Adding a work like this one gives an indoor, urban accent to a collection that is dominated by the sun-drenched pastoral art of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley. With Man at His Bath, building on great strengths in the work of Manet and Degas, we’ve added another icon to the collection.” I am therefore not that convinced Caillebotte’s nude is an unworthy addition to the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

But Tyler Green, an art blogger at ArtInfo, does raise an interesting point. He contrasts the MFA’s selling off at once the eight paintings with deaccesion strategies at other institutions such as the Hirshhorn, the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art who have been steadily deaccesioning items from their permanent collections over the years. Green suggests the latter strategy allows for a less desperate approach to replacing existing items in a collection for something new.

The following are the eight paintings that have been sold by the MFA to raise funds to acquire the Caillebotte’s painting of some bloke’s butt:

• Maxime Camille Louis Maufra, Gust of Wind, 1899
• Claude Monet, The Fort of Antibes, 1888
• Camille Pissarro, View from the Artist’s Window, Eragny, 1885
• Paul Gauguin, Forest Interior (Sous-Bois), 1884
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bust Portrait of a Young Woman, c1890
• Alfred Sisley, Overcast Day at Saint-Mammes, c1880
• Alfred Sisley, Saint-Mammes: Morning (Le Matin), 1881
• Vasily Vereshchagin, Pearl Mosque Delhi, c1880-90




I can not help but wonder if the fuss was over the acquisition of a full frontal nude of some buxom blonde would we have the same reaction? Of course we can not know that now. But I am am sure Gustave Caillebotte would have been amused with the fuss. Caillebotte was himself a collector of art, and owned paintings by a few of the artists the Museum of Fine Arts is now parting with for cash.

The problem is that some people see museum collections as set in stone, and I do not agree with such a premise. Collections are not finite and their curators strive to improve them. We all accept that museums do their best to acquire new pieces, as they become available and if they have funds. Other pieces are bequeathed to museums, given on ‘permanent’ loan. When these new pieces enter the collection, they do not ‘violate’ the existing collection, they add to it in some way – or so the curator hopes. But the same applies to getting rid of a few pieces, deaccesion is the correct term but it amounts to the same thing. If a curator decides to sell of a few pieces in an attempt to improve the collection, that should be as welcome as a curator who tried to add to a collection.

Personally, I would not give either of the two bland Sisley riverscapes wall space, but then I would not give up the Pissarro for anything. I am not a fan of Sisley, but after all the grand French impressionism exhibitions in France last year, I have a deep appreciation for Pisarro’s work above all the others.

Gustave Caillebotte’s almost life size painting Man and His Bath can be seen in the upcoming ‘Degas and the Nude’ exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (9 October 2011 – 5 February 2012). The exhibition travels to Paris, where the painting will be on view in the Musée d’Orsay from 12 March to 1 July, 2012. This is the second painting by Caillebotte in the museum’s collection, the other being Fruit Displayed on a Stand (c 1881–82), purchased in 1979.



About to be auctioned by Sotheby’s, in their 2 November sale.
Camille Pisarro, View from the Artist’s Window, Eragny, 1885. Oil on Canvas 54.5 cm x 65.1 cm. © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.


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