Friday 11 November 2005

The Floor Scrapers -- Caillebotte

2 comments:

BerlinBear said...

This is a beauty. Unless I'm very much mistaken as to where I saw it, this is my absolute favourite in the whole of the Musee d'Orsay, which is saying something. The only thing about it is: have you ever noticed how the two on the right have spectacularly long arms?

Peter Cresswell said...

"...have you ever noticed how the two on the right have spectacularly long arms?"

That's not uncommon. Have you for example ever measured the limbs of Rodin's figures, like The Thinker for example. None are exactly what they shoud be -- the artist often uses the slight incongruity to get your own eye to complete what you think SHOULD be there.

Caillebotte is probably using this technique here to get your own eye to impart a sense of motion into the arms, which perspective and the almost photo-sequenced choreography of movements also assist with.

And I do believe it either is or was at Musee D'Orsay. :-)