The Trojan Horse of Art: How Caillebotte Forced the Louvre's Hand to Accept His Impressionist Collection

Gustave Caillebotte is celebrated today as the painter of Floor Scrapers or Paris Street; Rainy Day, but his other great masterpiece was not painted on canvas with oil. It was written on paper with ink. A wealthy patron and the youngest member of the Impressionist group, Caillebotte understood early on that the battle for artistic recognition would not be won solely through talent, but through politics and finance. In a stroke of foresight that resembled a chess master's final move, he turned his own death into a legal weapon that would force the French State to embrace the very art it despised.

The Twenty-Eight-Year-Old's Will

The story begins in 1876. Gustave Caillebotte was only twenty-eight years old, yet, perhaps sensing the fragility of life following the recent death of his brother René, he decided to set his affairs in order. It was a staggering document for such a young man. In it, he not only provided funds for a future exhibition of the "intransigents or impressionists" but also bequeathed his entire personal collection of Impressionist works to the French government.

However, Caillebotte was not naive. He knew the administration hated the "new painting" and would likely hide the works away in reserves. Therefore, he drafted his will and bequests with a brilliantly restrictive clause designed to prevent the State from burying the collection. He stipulated that the paintings must not be sent to "an attic or a provincial museum". Instead, they had to be displayed in the Musée du Luxembourg—the museum reserved for living artists—and later transferred to the Louvre. He predicted that it might take "twenty years or more" for the public to accept these works, but he was willing to wait from beyond the grave.

The Poisoned Gift

To ensure his plan was executed, Caillebotte appointed his friend Pierre-Auguste Renoir as his executor, granting him the power to negotiate with the State and offering him a painting of his choice as payment for the trouble that was sure to follow. When Caillebotte died suddenly of a stroke in February 1894, the trap snapped shut. The State found itself in an impossible position: it was being offered a massive collection of 65 to 70 works, including 16 Monets, 18 Pissarros, 8 Renoirs, 9 Sisleys, and 4 Manets (this list is open to debate).

For two years, a fierce battle raged behind the scenes between the administration and the executors. The Director of Fine Arts and the curator of the Luxembourg Museum, Léonce Bénédicte, tried to stall, arguing that the museum lacked space and that the public was not ready for such "dangerous renegades". They viewed the collection as an "offense to dignity" and tried to negotiate the acceptance of only a few token pieces. Renoir, faithful to his late friend's wishes and supported by Martial Caillebotte, stood firm. They insisted that the bequest be accepted to ensure the artists entered the museum at all, though they eventually agreed to a compromise.

The "Caillebotte Room" Scandal

The government finally agreed to accept roughly half the collection—about forty works—rejecting the rest. This shortsighted refusal resulted in the loss of major masterpieces, which were eventually returned to the heirs and later snapped up by the American collector Albert C. Barnes. However, the victory was substantial. When the "Caillebotte Room" finally opened its doors at the Palais du Luxembourg on February 9, 1897, the establishment erupted in anger.

The Academy was outraged. A royalist senator even led a protest, declaiming against the presence of such "filth" in a national institution. Yet, the maneuver had worked. By forcing the State's hand, Caillebotte had breached the walls of the official art world. He had displayed a rare modesty in the process; while he fought for his friends, he had explicitly excluded his own paintings from the bequest. It was only thanks to the insistence of his heirs that his own work, such as The Floor Scrapers, eventually joined the collection that now forms the pride of the Musée d’Orsay.

This blog is based on anthologies of primary sources edited by Art d'Histoire Academy. Find the complete academic references in:

Will and Bequests, Caillebotte

You can also access the Art d'Histoire channel and its traditional videos:

The Impressionist Saga

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