Until Nov. 16, 2025, two masterpieces by Gustave Caillebotte are on display in Louis Vuitton ’s new flagship store in New York City on 57th Avenue. On the store’s fifth floor, in a space redefined as Espace Louis Vuitton, is the exhibition that brings together for the first time two emblematic works by the French painter: Jeune homme à sa fenêtre (1876), on loan from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the celebrated Partie de bateau (circa 1877-1878), on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The project is the result of an exceptional collaboration between the three institutions: the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the Musée d’Orsay and the Getty. The presentation in New York aims to ideally continue the path of valorization of the artist undertaken by the Musée d’Orsay, which had dedicated to him the major retrospective Caillebotte. Peindre les hommes, which later landed at the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.
With this initiative, which opened last Oct. 28, the Fondation Louis Vuitton wants to invite visitors to discover the pictorial modernity of an artist who, while close to the Impressionists, distinguished himself from them by his rigorous attention to composition, perspective and the depiction of urban life. Caillebotte, who was born in Paris in 1848 and died prematurely in 1894, belonged to the generation that made painting a tool for interpreting the transformations of modernity. His paintings reflect the changing Paris of the Second Empire and the Third Republic, with its new boulevards, bourgeois interiors and middle-class leisure venues. The artist became an interpreter of a time suspended between tradition and progress, observing society with a gaze that was both analytical and intimate.
In Jeune homme à sa fenêtre, dated 1876, Caillebotte portrays his brother René looking out onto a Parisian balcony, his gaze turned toward the street. The bourgeois interior, sober and uncluttered, contrasts with the life that takes place beyond the window. The male figure, with his back turned, becomes emblematic of modern contemplation: the man observing the urban world without ever completely abandoning his private refuge. The painting, belonging to the J. Paul Getty Museum, is one of the icons of the artist’s psychological realism and anticipates the cinematic sensibility that would characterize so much twentieth-century painting.
In Partie de bateau, made between 1877 and 1878, the atmosphere changes dramatically. The work, now part of the Musée d’Orsay collections, depicts a group of friends on a boat trip on the Seine. The characters, rendered with dense, luminous brushwork, embody the energy and freedom of leisure. Purchased in 2022 thanks to the support of the LVMH group, the painting was recognized as a “National Treasure” by France, a title that testifies to its historical and artistic value. The juxtaposition of these two works, which have never before been exhibited together, aims to give an understanding of Caillebotte’s dual soul: the painter of intimacy and the painter of modernity, the melancholy observer and the protagonist of a new vision of the world.
The installation at Espace Louis Vuitton New York aims to put the two canvases in direct dialogue, accentuating their formal and conceptual affinities. The visual frames that Caillebotte uses-the window in one, the boat in the other-become devices that invite the viewer into the scene, eliminating the distance between viewer and subject. This choice gives the works an almost cinematic character: the view of the world is no longer static, but dynamic, oscillating between participation and observation. The exhibition thus allows us to grasp the extraordinary modernity of the painter, who not only anticipates Impressionist aesthetics, but pushes it toward a new reflection on the experience of the gaze.
The initiative, as mentioned, stems from a collaboration between the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the Musée d’Orsay, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, and is made possible by the support of LVMH, which in 2022 contributed to the acquisition of Partie de bateau for the French collections. Indeed, the French luxury brand has long been helping to support the Musée d’Orsay, with allocations for purchases and renovations, and the museum has reciprocated by offering to serve as a stage for the brand’s fashion shows and, now, by lending a painting for the store. For the Partie de bateau alone, LVMH has provided the sum of 43 million euros, compared with the 3 million the museum budgets each year for acquisitions. The Getty, for its part, while noting that the partnership is with Fondation Louis Vuitton and not LVMH, is nonetheless open to a dialogue with the private sector, which is particularly important at a time in history when public support for museums in the U.S. is shrinking.
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| New York, two Caillebotte masterpieces on display at Louis Vuitton flagship store |
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