January 14, 2018

A little bit of art history and flooring history

As an art history major and fine artist I am always looking at art. As a flooring sales person I am also always looking at floors and so this blog reaches the apex of both worlds for me. Perusing instagram the other day one of my favorite feeds, art news daily, posted an amazing painting by the French impressionist Gustave Caillebotte. For more on him follow this link.

Here is one of two images titled " Les raboteurs de parquet " painted in 1875.

 

And here is the second image painted one year later in 1876

 

Art historians have surmised that these workmen were re doing the floors in the artist's home which makes sense. Caillebotte would need long periods of time to study the light and the figures before he could successfully lay out these amazing paintings. What are the workmen doing? It would appear that they are either scraping old finish off the hard way or another idea is that may have been doing a handscraped floor who knows? Whatever the answer is this is a fascinating document of work that no artist of any standing in his time would bother to create. Caillebotte was doing something unheard of, he was painting the average workmen at their average jobs and the art academies did not approve. These paintings would be lost to the dustbin of history for a very long time but now we can more fully appreciate the story he is telling here. The story that art does not have to be about the gods or only the super wealthy but can catalog something far more important!

For more on this amazing artist click here.

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