“What is your favorite painting?”

I was asked this by sleepingpoet on Twitter today and I immediately knew what I was going to respond with and I thought it would make a good blog post.

Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877 by Gustave Caillebotte

I don’t know why I love this painting so much. It just seemed to strike the right chords in me and I fell in love with it right away. I had never seen it before, and mind you, this painting is approxamately 7ft tall and 9ft wide mounted on a single wall in the middle of a vaulted room in The Art Institute of Chicago with a glass ceiling. I came at it from the wrong side, but when I turned around and saw this giant painting in the impressionism wing, I literally gasped and stood there with my jaw open.

It was probably pretty funny, but I loved it for some reason. I soaked up as much info as I could about it form the tour guide and the facts about this are just so interesting! What I remember most, is this painting was made only about four years after the invention of the umbrella so they were all very fashionable at the time. Also, this is at some famous five-street intersection in Paris which still exists today, but if you look in the background of the painting, partially obscured by fog is scaffolding because at these time these buildings are still being built. It’s just amazing the amount of history Caillebotte captured in this painting.

Me and my parents reflected in Could Gate, a.k.a. "The Bean" on a rainy day in Chicago, April 2008.

Tags: Chicago, favorite, impressionism, painting, Twitter

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Art Geekery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.