This dissertation focuses primarily on the Impressionist artist Gustave Caillebotte's paintings of rowers on the Yerres River outside Paris, created in the late 1870s. The works engage with many of the radical shifts in social and cultural norms that took place during the latter half of the nineteenth-century as industrialization and urbanization increasingly affected daily life in Europe and America. The paintings are in dialogue with developments in the fine arts, including the growing influence of Impressionism and avant-garde artists, and deal extensively with the male figure, reacting to and engaging with changing norms of masculinity. To fully examine the works, I focus on five areas of comparison. First, in considering the possible implications of changing masculine ideals in relation to the physical body during the period, I consider Caillebotte's controversial nude male bathers. I then contrast Caillebotte's oarsmen with both the professional rowers portrayed by his American contemporary Thomas Eakins, and the more leisurely boating scenes of his fellow Impressionists. Finally, I examine the history of the dandy/flâneurs figure, arguing that Caillebotte's rowers illustrate the artist's attempt to reinvent and modernize the concept. My thesis attempts to bridge different methodological approaches that have tended to isolate aspects of the artist's work, thereby obscuring his overall project of engaging with both the social and theoretical concept of modernity. Although the artist is underrepresented in the general literature of Impressionism, he has lately played a significant role in texts examining Impressionist interest in the suburban vacation spots along the Seine River. Such authors have illuminated Caillebotte's background as a serious sportsman, an aspect of the artist previously underexplored. I also build on feminist and queer theorists, who in recent years have called attention to the potential for sexual subversity within Caillebotte's oeuvre. Although acknowledging a debt to all of these scholars, my dissertation is an attempt to expand the scholarly conversation by examining how these works explore the concept of modernity, both formally, in the manner in which Caillebotte calls attention to the artifice of painting and socially, in how he engages with the changing physical landscape and the increasing potential for leisure activities outside Paris following the Franco-Prussian War. Finally, in arguing that Caillebotte rowers are transported flâneurs, who, though now engaged in daytime paddling rather than evening strolling, continue their mission of anonymity and observation, I suggest an expansion of the very definition of flâneurs, and by extension, the dandy figure that remains relevant as a type even today. / Art History

Ce mémoire prend pour objet l'étude des vues du Paris moderne par Gustave Caillebotte. Son engagement profond dans la réalité vécue le conduit vers une fascination particulière pour la reproduction de l'image urbaine. Entre 1876 et 1880, l'artiste déambule dans les rues et les boulevards en vue d'exécuter des traitements picturaux originaux et peindre des visions singulières, par rapport à sa propre production artistique de même qu'à celle de ses confrères impressionnistes. En raison des différents points de vue traités dans l'espace urbain, sa perception de la ville semble, à notre avis, évolutive. Que ce soit depuis la rue ou en hauteur, Caillebotte reproduit Paris telle qu'elle se présente devant lui ; c'est ce qui paraît le guider dans sa recherche. Si bien que notre travail consiste à démontrer qu'il est un peintre de la ville moderne. Par l'analyse de trois points de vue privilégiés (dans la rue, à la fenêtre et au balcon), remarqués à la fois dans son corpus et dans sa démarche, cette recherche veut montrer comment l'artiste perçoit l'urbanité moderne et comment il la rend. Nous observons qu'une adéquation entre les moyens plastiques modernes utilisés et l'intérêt de représenter la réalité elle-même moderne, traduit son processus créatif. Apporter des arguments au sujet de son étude des vues de ville, permet aujourd'hui de mieux cerner le travail unique de Gustave Caillebotte dans le paysage urbain.

<p>Before the rise of the ubiquitous MOCA (museum of contemporary) there was the Mus&eacutee national du Luxembourg that since its foundation in 1818, served as the first museum anywhere dedicated to contemporary art. Yet the Luxembourg has been left to lurk in the shadows of art history. Best remembered for its mismanagement of the Caillebotte Bequest (1894-1897) that left the French state as the beneficiary of several dozen Impressionist canvases, the Luxembourg has been dismissed as epitomizing official support for an exhausted academicism. </p><p> This dissertation has sought to correct these misconceptions of the museum and the Third Republic Fine Arts administration. It provides an institutional history of the museum under the early Third Republic (1871-1914) that reconsiders how different interpretations of republicanism informed its curators' policies and practices. Information culled from archives, official publications, art criticism, and even tourist brochures, has revealed that in the 1890s and especially the 1900s, the museum's curators embraced the politics of solidarism. Applying solidarist principles such as eclecticism, tolerance, and commitment to public education, its curators defended their acquisition of both avant-garde and academic works of art. These principles further spurred curators to trace the spectrum of contemporary painterly styles to French artist tradition. In so doing, the Luxembourg's administrators implicitly upheld republicanism as a characteristically, even classically, French ideology that, in its translation into paint and institutional policies, testified to the nation's continued cultural, artistic, and political supremacy.</p> / Dissertation

During the 19th century, France was a cultural stronghold filled with political aspects and dreams. Art flourished and the ancient heroic ideals had shaped the male nude art for many years. But new times would come and change the artistic basis forever. The start of Impressionism also became the beginning of a new era, where gender roles began to be questioned and the image of masculinity began to falter. An artistic revolution saw the light of day, artists no longer wanted to follow the traditional rules and normative footprints that had been put in the ground long before their days. Gustave Caillebotte, a young rich art collector and a dear friend of the impressionistic circle started to paint just for fun, without knowing that his name would echo over the world more than a century after his death. Male nude art was strictly marginalized during the 19th century, but Caillebotte would be one of the first artists who dared to defy the traditional rules. The purpose of the essay is to get a better idea of the norms that influenced French oil painting during the 19th century and how the artist Gustave Caillebotte related to the classical image convention with his two works Man in the Bath and Man Wipes His Leg. The essay will delve into an analysis of these two motifs and examine how they challenged the heteronormative gaze, also called the male gaze, before the essay concludes with an empirical result.