Is Gustave Caillebotte’s Art Public Domain? Works and Image Files

Short answer: Caillebotte’s own ordinary EU author term has expired, and there are museum files offered for open reuse. The exact Met image illustrated here is one. But “Caillebotte is public domain” is not enough to clear every file or resolve every work’s U.S. publication history.

Gustave Caillebotte lived from 1848 to 1894. Many people first encounter him through Paris Street; Rainy Day: a large painting of people moving through a Paris intersection beneath umbrellas. His work also includes flowers, river scenes, interiors, portraits and preparatory drawings. An artist guide should help you find the correct object among those subjects, not simply place one copyright label over them all.

The distinctions below are practical. They explain what an institutional record can tell you, what the supplied file permits and what this guide has not independently established.

More than a rainy street

The Art Institute of Chicago’s record identifies Paris Street; Rainy Day as an oil painting from 1877, more than two metres high. The scale matters: what looks like a quiet postcard on a phone is an encounter with almost life-sized pedestrians in a museum.

Caillebotte’s late garden paintings offer a different starting point. The Met’s Chrysanthemums in the Garden at Petit-Gennevilliers, painted in 1893, shows plants grown on his property northwest of Paris. Rather than placing a small bouquet within a room, he brings the flowers close enough to fill the picture.

Both subjects can suit someone looking for a print, but they ask different things of a reproduction. The street needs enough width to keep its spatial relationships. The tall garden picture depends on the contrast between crowded flower heads above and long stems below. A square crop would be a new presentation, not the whole painting.

Look at the chrysanthemums

The opening image is the complete museum-supplied view of the painted object. At the top, cream, pink and dark red flowers overlap so closely that individual blooms are hard to separate. Lower down, the long stalks become easier to follow. There is no broad patch of sky or distant horizon to tell you how far away you stand.

This makes the painting useful for understanding Caillebotte beyond the familiar city scenes. You can follow the stems upward, then lose those clear routes among the clustered petals. The surface alternates between areas that read as recognisable plants and passages where colour and brushwork become the main interest.

The Met connects the close-up treatment with Caillebotte’s plans for plant-decorated dining-room doors. That is a proposed relationship, not a claim that the canvas itself was necessarily installed as a door. Retaining that distinction keeps a useful museum interpretation from turning into an invented history.

The record gives the canvas as about 99 by 62 centimetres. Its narrow format is therefore not an accidental crop introduced by a wallpaper seller. Keep the museum dimensions and complete composition with the file before deciding how it will fit a page or a frame.

A painting, a study and a related version are different objects

Chicago also holds a Study for Paris Street; Rainy Day. The shared title does not make the study interchangeable with the finished painting. A study can preserve planning marks or omit figures that appear in the finished work; each has its own accession and image.

The same caution applies to river and bridge titles. On the Pont de l’Europe at the Kimbell is a specific 1876–77 canvas, accession AP 1982.01. A general search for “Caillebotte bridge” can mix separate compositions. Match the institution and object, not just the landmark.

Similarly, Boating Party and Skiffs are separate works. Do not transfer a caption or image permission from one to the other because both contain small boats.

Twelve records for further research

The first row supplies the image displayed here. The other eleven are research links. Some institutions offer open images; other records display named photographic credits. None of those additional files has been acquired and approved as an illustration in this guide.

Exact work	Holding institution / date	Important distinction
Chrysanthemums in the Garden at Petit-Gennevilliers	The Met, 1893	Illustrated exact Met CC0 file.
Paris Street; Rainy Day	Art Institute of Chicago, 1877	Finished painting; museum API marks it public domain.
Calf’s Head and Ox Tongue	Art Institute of Chicago, about 1882	Separate still-life painting.
Study for Paris Street; Rainy Day	Art Institute of Chicago, 1877	Preparatory work, not the finished canvas.
Sketchbook	Art Institute of Chicago, June 1883–September 1887	Identify the individual leaf before using an image.
Self-Portrait with a Hat	Art Institute of Chicago, about 1879	Separate portrait record.
The Floor Scrapers	Musée d’Orsay, 1875	Named photographic credit; no file permission inferred here.
Dahlias, Garden at Petit Gennevilliers	National Gallery of Art, 1893	Different garden painting from the Met’s chrysanthemums.
Skiffs	National Gallery of Art, 1877	Accession 1985.64.6; no image acquired for this guide.
View of Rooftops (Effect of Snow)	Musée d’Orsay, 1878	Preserve the museum’s title and date.
Boating Party	Musée d’Orsay, about 1877–78	Not the same composition as Skiffs.
On the Pont de l’Europe	Kimbell Art Museum, 1876–77	Keep accession AP 1982.01 with the image.

Three different rights questions

The artist’s term: Under the ordinary EU life-plus-seventy-year rule, Caillebotte’s own term has elapsed. Later first-publication rights, other contributors and national moral rights are separate matters. This is not a worldwide statement.

The work’s U.S. history: This guide does not independently establish U.S. publication history for the works listed above, including the illustrated Met painting. The Met and Chicago designations are attributed institutional assessments. They are not presented as a publication investigation conducted by GeMarkt. U.S. section 303 is one reason not to substitute a painting date for that investigation.

The particular file: The Met’s record and Open Access policy establish the selected file’s CC0 designation. That applies to this supplied image, not to every photograph of the painting. A visible online image, a download button and permission for commercial reuse are not automatically the same thing.

Before you use the image

Keep the original museum file, record URL, accession and credit together. Compare the full image with the preview before cropping: a missing strip can remove a figure, change a balance or disguise the proportions of the original.

Do not copy a modern catalogue’s prose along with an open artwork image. Text, design and conservation photographs can have separate terms. If a file source is unclear, choose an identified open institutional file instead of using a seller’s “copyright free” label as evidence.

For Chrysanthemums, the starting point is concrete: Met accession 2014.736 and its supplied image. For another Caillebotte, begin again with that object’s record. The extra minute spent making the match is more useful than a broad “all Caillebotte is free” promise.