Gustave Caillebotte
French, 1848–1894
The Floor Scrapers
1875
Oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Gift of Caillebotte's heirs through the intermediary of August Renoir, 1894
In 1875, Caillebotte submitted this painting to the jury of the French Salon. The canvas was rejected, but it caught the eye of some of the impressionists, who invited Caillebotte to show his work the following year at their second exhibition. There, hanging alongside works by Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Claude Monet, The Floor Scrapers garnered considerable attention. Some critics praised the work’s depiction of shirtless urban laborers for its startling realism, while conservative reviewers found the unidealized figures offensive: “Do nudes,” wrote one, “but do beautiful nudes, or don’t do them at all!”
Click on the image to see the full painting.
