Property of a Private Collector Gustave Caillebotte

Ambroise Vollard, Paris

Leo Larguier, Paris

Sale: Versailles, Trianon-Palace, December 1, 1968, lot 53 (misattributed in the catalogue)

Philippe Reichenbach, Paris

Arthur Tooth & Co., London (acquired from the above in December 1968)

Acquired from the above in May 1969

Marie Berhaut, Caillebotte: Sa Vie et son Oeuvre, Catalogue Raisonné des Peintures et Pastels, Paris, 1978, no. 188, illustrated p. 145

Marie Berhaut, Gustave Caillebotte: Catalogue Raisonné des Peintures et Pastels, Paris, 1994, no. 221, illustrated p. 157

The present work was completed in 1882, the last year Caillebotte participated in the annual Impressionist group show in Paris.  This exhibition officially announced the appearance of landscapes and seascapes in Caillebotte’s oeuvre and it was during this period that his work most closely began to resemble the Impressionist styles of Monet, Sisley and Pissarro.  Beginning in the 1880s, Caillebotte spent much of his time painting along the Normandy coast in Villerville and Trouville.  It is in these paintings, according to Rodolphe Rapetti, that “Caillebotte abandoned the fashionable activity and seaside elegance so dear to Boudin, focusing instead on landscapes from which the human figure is absent.  In several of these paintings, the ocean surface serves as a pretext for subjective explorations of coloristic effects that, in technical terms, are among the artist’s most successful achievements in the 1880s” (Rodolphe Rapetti, Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist, Paris, 1995, p. 265).

In La Mer Vue de Villerville, Caillebotte employed the same perspectival techniques that he used for his dramatic depictions of cityscapes.  What is particularly noteworthy in this picture is Caillebotte’s inclusion of boats, which give scale and depth to the composition and are a reflection of his life-long passion for sailing.