Focus on Les raboteurs de parquet and explain the Exhibition and reception.
Despite the effort Caillebotte put into the painting, it was rejected by France's most prestigious art exhibition, the Salon, in 1875. The depiction of working-class people in their trade, not fully clothed, shocked the jurors and was deemed a "vulgar subject matter". He was hurt by this rejection, and instead showed it at the second exhibition of the Impressionists, with whom he had already associated himself, in 1876. He presented it alongside some of his other works, including a second, different version of Raboteurs from 1876, and his earlier work Jeune homme à sa fenêtre (Young Man at His Window) The images of the floor scrapers came to be associated with Degas's paintings of washerwomen, also presented at the same exhibition and similarly scorned as "vulgar".The painting divided opinion in Paris art circles. Among the detractors, Emile Porchoron, a critic of Impressionism, damned Caillebotte with faint praise: "the least bad of the exhibition. One of the missions Impressionism seems to have set for itself is to torture perspective: you see here what results can be obtained." Émile Zola praised the technical execution, but then called it "an anti-artistic painting, painting as neat as glass, bourgeois painting, because of the exactitude of the copying." Louis Énault was not troubled by the depiction ("The subject matter is certainly vulgar, but we can understand how it might tempt a painter") but did find fault with the image's fidelity to the scene: "I only regret that the artist did not choose his types better... The arms of the planers are too thin, and their chests too narrow... may your nude be handsome or don't get involved with it!"The painting received praise from many critics, though. Regarding the Salon rejection, poet and critic Émile Blémont called the decision "[a] very bad mark for the official jurors". Marius Chaumelin compared Caillebotte favorably to his contemporaries, writing that the work showed that he was "a realist just as raw, but much more witty, than Courbet, just as violent, but altogether more precise, than Manet." Philippe Burty made comparisons to an even earlier generation of artists: "His pictures are original in their composition, but, more than that, so energetic as to drawing that they resemble the early Florentines."
Impressionism Young Man at His Window Emile Porchoron Courbet Florentine Émile Blémont Émile Zola nude Impressionist the Salon perspective Marius Chaumelin Louis Énault Philippe Burty Paris Manet bourgeois