Roses jaunes dans un vase

The present canvas, which depicts a lush bouquet of yellow roses in a simple stone vase, is one of nine floral compositions that Caillebotte painted between 1881 and 1883, the years of his most significant production in the genre of still-life. Discussing Caillebotte's experiments with still-life during this period, Douglas Druick has written, "The artist's occasional engagements with the subject in the late 1870s and early 1880s produced some of the most provocatively original compositions within his oeuvre" (Gustave Caillebotte, Urban Impressionist, exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago, 1995, p. 232). Caillebotte's interest in floral still-life paralleled his interest in gardening, which developed after his acquisition in 1881 of a house at Petit Gennevilliers, a suburban enclave directly across the Seine from Argenteuil. In the previous decade, Caillebotte had treated the garden largely as an extension of the bourgeois home, painting several canvases at his father's estate at Yerres that show family members seated or strolling within the secluded grounds. At Petit Gennevilliers, by contrast, he made flowers a central theme of his work, depicting freshly cut blossoms in vases, densely planted beds of dahlias and chrysanthemums, and exotic orchids growing in a manmade greenhouse. Pierre Wittmer comments, "The garden at Petit Gennevilliers became a horticultural laboratory and an artist's studio, where the experimental propagation of plants provided the subject matter for paintings which recorded the passage of the seasons through the cycle of their plants" (Gustave Caillebotte, The Unknown Impressionist, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1996, p. 204).

Caillebotte began his serious engagement with still-life at precisely the same moment that Monet and Renoir started to pay the genre more attention. Between 1878 and 1880, Monet painted at least fifteen floral still-lifes, one of which Caillebotte acquired from his friend shortly after it was painted (Wildenstein no. 635). Caillebotte's friendship with Monet was based as much on their mutual passion for gardening as on their shared artistic interests. In a series of letters from Giverny, Monet invited Caillebotte to come visit when his irises had bloomed, requested advice on vendors of perennials, reported on an exhibition of flowers that he had seen in Paris, and described a shipment of rare Japanese plants that he had received from Belgium. Monet also spoke of his admiration of Caillebotte's art: "In still-life, he has achieved pieces which are worthy of Manet's and Renoir's greatest successes" (quoted in J. House, Monet: Nature Into Art, New Haven, 1986, p. 43).

For Monet and Renoir, part of the appeal of still-life in the years around 1880 was commercial. Floral compositions in particular were readily saleable and yielded higher prices than Impressionist landscapes. Although Caillebotte was free from the financial pressures that his colleagues faced, his interest in still-life nonetheless suggests an attentiveness to the market issues involved in contemporary painting. Druick suggests:

In a sense, Caillebotte's thoughtful pictures confronted the practice of Monet and Renoir, whose exhibition of sumptuous floral pieces catered to the consumption of paintings as luxury goods. While the subject, composition, and brushwork in Caillebotte's still-lifes can be seen to evidence the artist's moving toward what could be called canonical Impressionism, it is also possible to read in them an enterprise of another sort. Much as a designer in the employ of a noted couturier might channel individual expression in the service of the identifiable 'house style,' so Caillebotte produced a luxury commodity that stylistically bears the recognizable label 'Impressionist.' This more subversive reading is supported by the evidence of Caillebotte's other still-lifes of this period, which display his fascination with the themes of production and consumption, of marketing and display (op. cit., p. 233).