Monet's Bedroom and Caillebotte's Study

It's a modest room, but a beautiful one, and by the time you reach it you can't help envying Claude Monet. Look out the window: the flower garden stretches away in all its glory. How envious you'd be of Monet, waking up to this view every morning.

Above Monet's bed hangs a familiar painting. If you can't place it, check the detail page to find it. It is Gustave Caillebotte's "Paris Street; Rainy Day." If you've seen it at the Art Institute of Chicago, you'll remember the huge finished version; what hangs here is a study, a small practice piece. Caillebotte was a painter, but also a major art collector who bought many works by the Impressionists, and he and Monet were acquainted. So perhaps Monet bought one of Caillebotte's paintings, too.

This is Caillebotte's most famous work, depicting a rainy Paris street. It's the Rue de Moscou, near Gare Saint-Lazare, where you set out this morning. Even now, if you look at the street from Place de Dublin, where he painted it, you'll see exactly what's in the painting. Caillebotte wanted to render a scene as if photographing it. Take a look at the finished version on the detail page. He wasn't trying to reproduce a subject as perfectly as a photograph, but to capture a fleeting moment, the way a camera does. The people in the painting hurry along to wherever they're going. Even the two figures in front look sideways rather than at us, and the figure at the far right is deliberately cut in half, capturing the instantaneity of a photograph. The finished work is at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the study that hangs in this room can be seen at the Musée Marmottan Monet.

Now move on to the next room, which belonged to the Hoschedé daughters.