El Yerres, lluvia

Fine raindrops break the surface of a narrow river into countless rings. Caillebotte painted this quiet shower on the Yerres in 1875, by his family's country home, and turned an ordinary moment into something to look at slowly.

The story behind the painting

The Yerres river ran past the country residence of the wealthy Caillebotte family, in the town of the same name about twenty kilometres south of Paris. The setting was aristocratic, centred on the Château de la Grange from the time of Louis XIII. Caillebotte was drawn to the river and its atmosphere, and in the 1870s he painted many open-air pictures there. This one dates from 1875, painted in oil on canvas, when the young painter often worked outdoors by the water.

What to look for

The canvas is about 80 by 59 cm. Watch the rings spreading where light rain hits the water, and the vertical tree trunks reflected between them. A dirt path runs across the foreground, cut on a diagonal, facing an eroded bank with a boat. A house glimmers faintly through the trees in the background. It is unclear whether it is spring, summer or autumn, or whether the rain is beginning or about to stop.

Meaning and intent

The picture is simple, with close attention to geometric composition and reflected light, as in Caillebotte's The Floor Scrapers. The diagonal cut of the foreground recalls Japanese prints, then gaining popularity in Paris, and the right angles of horizontals and verticals set up a calm contrast with the passing river. Caillebotte saw it as the artist's task to keep stressing the beauty of the ordinary, which is so often overlooked.

Legacy

The rippling surface has been seen as a forerunner of the Water Lilies that Claude Monet would paint years later. The painting has been in the collection of the Indiana University Art Museum in Bloomington since 1971. Its quiet subject sits within Caillebotte's wider aim: by placing these effects of rain and light in a beautiful natural setting, he draws attention to a beauty that is easy to miss. It shows that his eye for structure, so clear in his city scenes, worked just as well on a simple stretch of river.