Gustave Caillebotte
The family house Caillebotte's father built on the corner of the rue de Miromesnil and the rue de Lisbonne, and where he painted The Floor Scrapers and Young Man at His Window in 1875. The building carries both street numbers.
77 rue de Miromesnil
Still standing
Outside only
Someone else
The corner house Gustave Caillebotte's father built, and the studio upstairs where he painted The Floor Scrapers and Young Man at His Window in 1875 — two pictures made by looking down at his own street.
- 77 rue de Miromesnil, 75008 Paris
- The Caillebotte family home, built by his father
The place, briefly
Martial Caillebotte senior made a fortune supplying beds to the French army and then in property during Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris, and he built this house on the corner of the rue de Miromesnil and the rue de Lisbonne. His son Gustave Caillebotte had a studio in it.
Two of the pictures that made his name were painted here in 1875. The Floor Scrapers shows three workmen stripping a parquet floor in an upstairs room of this building, stripped to the waist, seen from above — a subject the Salon jury rejected, apparently finding manual labour an improper thing to paint at that scale. Young Man at His Window shows his brother René from behind, looking down into the street from these windows.
That downward angle is Caillebotte's signature and it comes from this address. He was a rich man painting from the windows of a house his father built with Haussmann money, looking down at the new boulevards and the men who laid their floors, and the vantage is never neutral.
The two-address business trips people up. The building is on a corner and is numbered on both streets, so accounts naming 77 rue de Miromesnil and accounts naming 13 rue de Lisbonne are describing the same house.
Key facts
- His father, from an army-supply and property fortune
- 77 rue de Miromesnil and 13 rue de Lisbonne — one corner house
- The Floor Scrapers and Young Man at His Window, both 1875
- Rejected The Floor Scrapers
- Private — exterior only
Timeline
Caillebotte paints The Floor Scrapers and Young Man at His Window in the house.
The Floor Scrapers is shown at the second Impressionist exhibition after the Salon rejects it.
On the map
Questions before you go
Why do sources give two different addresses for Caillebotte's family home?
Because the house occupies a corner and is numbered on both streets. 77 rue de Miromesnil and 13 rue de Lisbonne are the same building.
Where was The Floor Scrapers painted?
In an upstairs room of this house, in 1875. The Salon rejected it; it was shown at the second Impressionist exhibition the following year and is now at the Musée d'Orsay.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
Galerie Maeght, 13 rue de Téhéran
The gallery Aimé and Marguerite Maeght opened in 1946 and ran as the most important dealership of post-war French art — Marc Chagall's Paris dealer for decades, and still trading at the same address.
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Visit the placeParc Monceau
An unusually theatrical park in the 8th arrondissement, full of deliberate follies — a colonnade round a pond, a pyramid, fake ruins — laid out in the 1770s as a private garden and opened to the public in 1861. It is where the young Marcel Proust played, and where he met his first love in July 1886.
Visit the place45 rue de Courcelles
Where the Proust family moved in 1900, and where Marcel lived until 1906 — the most socially active stretch of his life, receiving writers, artists and journalists and giving dinners. A commemorative plaque was installed by the City of Paris in 2022.
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.