Chickens, Game Birds, and Hares

c. 1882

Chickens, Game Birds, and Hares, c. 1882. Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848–1894). Oil on canvas; unframed: 75.9 x 105.1 cm (29 7/8 x 41 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Promised Gift of Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley 10.2020 Known largely for his figure and landscape paintings, Gustave Caillebotte also painted a series of stunning still lifes depicting fruit, shellfish, meat, chickens, and dead game. His exacting eye for realistic detail is evident in this view of chickens, game birds, and rabbits neatly arranged in a butcher shop. Fur, skin, and feathers are rendered with small, broken strokes of kaleidoscopic color—shimmering blues, deep reds, radiant yellows, and glowing greens. This superb display of Impressionist technique applied to a traditional subject forms a fascinating counterpoint to Caillebotte’s Portrait of a Man in the museum’s collection. Caillebotte balanced the notion of the wild with the orderly in this painting, as he created a grid-like composition of the vertically oriented game against the horizontal planes of the butcher shop shelves and hooks.