Gustave Caillebotte
After their mother's death Gustave and Martial Caillebotte sold the Miromesnil house and took a high apartment on the boulevard Haussmann. The overhead boulevard views were painted from its balcony.
31 boulevard Haussmann
Still standing
Outside only
Someone else
The sixth-floor apartment Gustave Caillebotte shared with his brother Martial after their mother's death — and the balcony from which he painted the boulevard looking almost straight down.
- 31 boulevard Haussmann, 75009 Paris
- The Caillebotte brothers' apartment from about 1879
The place, briefly
After their mother died, Gustave Caillebotte and his brother Martial sold the family house on the rue de Miromesnil and took a large apartment high up on the boulevard Haussmann.
The height is the whole point. From this balcony Caillebotte painted A Balcony, Boulevard Haussmann and the extraordinary boulevard views taken from directly overhead, in which the street becomes a pattern of trees, roofs and foreshortened pedestrians and the horizon disappears entirely. Nobody else in Paris was painting the city from that angle, and the pictures look startlingly modern because of it — closer to photography from a window than to landscape.
Martial was a composer and a serious amateur photographer, and the brothers' shared interest in what a lens does to space is visible in the paintings. They lived together until Gustave's marriage plans and country pursuits pulled him toward Petit-Gennevilliers.
The building is private, and the balcony is not identifiable from the street.
Key facts
- Gustave Caillebotte and his brother Martial
- About 1879, after their mother's death
- High — a sixth-floor apartment
- A Balcony, Boulevard Haussmann and the overhead boulevard views
- A composer and accomplished photographer
- Private — exterior only
Timeline
The brothers' mother dies and the Miromesnil house is sold.
Caillebotte paints A Balcony, Boulevard Haussmann.
On the map
Questions before you go
Why are Caillebotte's boulevard paintings seen from above?
He painted them from the balcony of a high apartment at 31 boulevard Haussmann. The vantage removes the horizon and turns the street into a pattern, which is why the pictures look so unlike other Impressionist cityscapes.
Who was Martial Caillebotte?
Gustave's younger brother, a composer and a skilled photographer, who shared this apartment with him.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
Rue Halévy
The short street running beside the Palais Garnier that Gustave Caillebotte painted in 1878, looking down from an upper window at the traffic and pedestrians below.
Visit the placePalais Garnier
The Paris opera house — Charles Garnier's Second Empire palace on the place de l'Opéra, inaugurated on 5 January 1875 and the home of the Paris Opera ever since.
Visit the place
American Express Office at Opéra
The office by the Opéra where American expatriates collected their mail and cashed their cheques, and where David goes to escape Giovanni's room in Baldwin's novel.
Visit the place
Café Napolitain
The boulevard terrace where the novel opens — an apéritif on the Right Bank, watching the evening crowd, the electric signs, and the last horse-cabs go by.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.