Paris Street; Rainy Day

In the pictureAn intersection in Paris on a rainy day. In the right foreground, a man and woman sharing an umbrella walk toward us, and behind them people with umbrellas are scattered about. A green lamppost divides the picture vertically down the middle, and on the left a wedge-shaped building recedes into the distance. The wet paving stones reflect the sky and shine silver. The man at the far right is half cut off by the edge of the picture.

BackgroundIt hung in the third Impressionist exhibition in 1877. Caillebotte came from a wealthy family and was a patron who bought his Impressionist friends' paintings, while he himself painted the new Paris with photographic precision instead of the blurred brushwork of Impressionism. This intersection is where boulevards created during Baron Haussmann's redevelopment of Paris meet, and it looks almost the same today. It is a large work, 2.7 meters wide.

Puzzle tipThere is a lot of gray, but the strong lines of perspective make positions easy to find. Set the couple in front and the lamppost first, then fill in the buildings by the grid of their windows and the pavement by the direction of the joints between the stones. The black half-circles of the umbrellas are reference points. The sky pieces are nearly one color, so leave them for last.