Rare Paintings Owned by a Impressionist Master’s Butler Go on Show in Paris

Five little-known works by the Impressionist painter Gustave
Caillebotte, which belonged to the artist’s butler, are now on view
at the Musée d’Orsay. They are a remarkable gift made by the great
granddaughter of Jean Daurelle, who became a servant in
Caillebotte’s parents’ upper-class household in Paris as a young
boy.

The works, which include Daurelle in his butler’s attire,
were passed down by the family until January this year, when
Marie-Jeanne Daurelle donated them to the Paris museum shortly
before her own death. She had no heirs. Though the works could have
been sold off for large sums—Caillebotte’s painting Chemin
Montant sold in New York for $22 million this
February—she had refused all offers from hopeful buyers.

The gift came as a welcome surprise to the museum of
19th-century art. When a senior curator at the museum visited
Marie-Jeanne Daurelle’s Paris flat, she found the shutters closed
and that “everything was dark” in the little apartment. Sylvie
Patry, who is the museum’s deputy director for curatorial affairs
and collections, told Le Parisien: “We opened them and the
light streamed in and I discovered three paintings in the sitting
room, two pastels in the bedroom by the television.” Patry added
that the paintings were were hung “like family photos.”

The Impressionist trove went on view yesterday, September
2, alongside other works by Caillebotte from the Musée d’Orsay
collection. Up until the gift, the museum owned seven works by the
French painter.

The two pastels, both depicting the Jean Daurelle’s son Camille,
were included in the Impressionist group’s fifth exhibition in 1880
in Paris. Two other oil paintings show Daurelle in a frock coat and
top hat. There is also a landscape, including a tree in full bloom
and the country house where Caillebotte and his brother spent much
of their time later in life, along with their friend Auguste
Renoir.

“It’s extremely touching,” Laurence des Cars, director of the
museum, told the Times. “This brings us in direct contact
with the end of the 19th century, thanks to the attachment of the
artist to a servant and his family across the social barriers of
the time.”

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Butler Go on Show in Paris appeared first on artnet
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