Espace Louis Vuitton New York Presents two Masterpieces by Gustave Caillebotte

At Espace Louis Vuitton New York, two of Gustave Caillebotte’s most emblematic works—Jeune homme à sa fenêtre (Young Man at His Window, 1876) from the J. Paul Getty Museum and Partie de bateau (Boating Party, 1877–78) from the Musée d’Orsay—have been reunited for the first time on American soil. Presented through November 16, 2025, this exceptional exhibition marks the culmination of an international partnership between the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Getty Museum, offering visitors a final, intimate encounter with the artist’s dual vision of modern life before the paintings return to Paris and Los Angeles.

“This presentation is really the last step of a long project,” explained Paul Perrin, Chief Curator and Director of Conservation and Collections at the Musée d’Orsay. “The idea was to promote Caillebotte as one of the greatest artists of the 19th century. These two works—acquired by the Musée d’Orsay and the Getty in 2022 and 2021 respectively—were natural partners for this project. They form a perfect dialogue.”

A Dialogue Between Two Eras of Modernity

The show extends the major traveling exhibition Caillebotte: Peindre les hommes (“Painting Men”), which toured Paris, Los Angeles, and Chicago, revealing the painter’s enduring resonance. For Perrin, these early masterpieces distill Caillebotte’s vision: “The late 1870s were really the best moment of his career, when he was establishing himself as a great avant-garde artist. Young Man at His Window was painted the year he joined the Impressionists. It’s about a young Parisian who doesn’t need to work but wants to do something meaningful—someone poised between the private interior and the modern city outside. Boating Party, made two years later, becomes a manifesto of modern leisure—the iconography of sport, of the modern man from the city escaping to nature.”

“They form a perfect dialogue,”

Paul Perrin

Katherine Fleming, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, reflected on the immediacy of these works: “When you stand in front of them, you’re drawn right in—you’re almost like the man at the window, hurled through the dark room and out into the bright street. What he’s looking at isn’t some quaint Parisian scene—it’s the modern city itself.” For Fleming, that modernity connects directly to Los Angeles: “As an institution in California, there’s something meaningful about displaying a work like this—it speaks to a Californian sensibility, to cinema and light.”

Immersion, Photography, and the Modern Gaze

That cinematic quality—what Jean-Paul Claverie, Advisor to the Chairman of LVMH and Administrator of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, called “the spectator introduced into the picture”—lies at the heart of Caillebotte’s innovation. “You are not looking from afar,” he said. “You are in the boat, in the street, in the room—you are active in seeing. That’s really modern.” For Claverie, this quality even prefigures the photographic and cinematic language of Los Angeles: “The picture could be related to the culture of L.A.—photography, cinema, art direction. It’s incredible, the connection with that visual culture.”

“When you stand in front of them, you’re drawn right in,”

Katherine Fleming

Perrin underscored how Caillebotte’s embrace of photographic framing fundamentally altered painting’s compositional logic. “He was not an artist who looked back,” he noted. “He didn’t copy the past at the Louvre. He said, ‘I want to make the art of my time because I am of my time.’ Painting for him was about creating the conditions for the viewer to enter the work. It’s a major shift—from composition to perception.”

Gustave Gaillebotte, A Radical Spirit and a Visionary Patron 

Caillebotte’s independence—both financial and intellectual—enabled that radical freedom. Coming from a wealthy family, he never painted to sell. “He was a philanthropist of his friends,” said Claverie. “He opened the doors of the French museums to the Impressionists.” In 1876, the same year he painted Young Man at His Window, he drafted his will, leaving his collection of works by Monet, Renoir, and Degas to the French state—a gesture that would later shape the Musée d’Orsay’s core holdings. “He knew it would take time for people to understand,” added Perrin, “but he was convinced this was the art of the future.”

Collaboration Across Continents Between LVMH, The Getty, and Musee d’Orsay

The exhibition also celebrates the spirit of international collaboration and family stewardship. Fleming described the emotional dimension of working with Caillebotte’s descendants: “You really sense how important these works are to their personal heritage. They aren’t just objects that have passed from hand to hand—they’re lived with.” Perrin added, “Among the Impressionists, Caillebotte is the only one whose family still holds so many important works. It’s extraordinary.”

“You really sense how important these works are to their personal heritage,”

Katherine Fleming

For Claverie, hosting these 19th-century canvases at Espace Louis Vuitton—within the contemporary structure of a global maison—felt perfectly natural. “The man at the window is all about the modern city, architecture, how people live in new spaces,” he said. “It’s also about elegance—this man in his top hat, stylish and composed. He’s a dandy of modern life. That’s very Louis Vuitton.”

Rediscovering a Modern Master of Impressionism

Why, then, did Caillebotte remain in the shadows for so long? Perrin points to a mix of circumstance and perception: “Many of his works stayed in the family for decades. And because he wasn’t a precursor of abstraction, art historians long overlooked him. But in the 1980s, people began to see that modernity isn’t only about abstraction—it’s about perspective, psychology, and the human gaze.”

That gaze—modern, cinematic, introspective—comes alive anew in New York. Standing before these two paintings, one senses the continuum between Caillebotte’s Paris and today’s metropolis: the tension between solitude and spectacle, reflection and motion, interiority and exposure. As Perrin observed, “He’s free of everything—he painted for what he wanted to see.”

“He’s free of everything—he painted for what he wanted to see,”

Paul Perrin

In the ephemeral Espace Louis Vuitton, those freedoms converge—French modernity, American collaboration, and a timeless invitation to look again.

Discover Gustave Caillebotte at Espace Louis Vuitton New York
6 East 57th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY
Hours: Monday–Saturday, 10 AM–7:30 PM; Sunday, 10 AM–6:30 PM
Dates: October 28–November 16, 2025

This exhibition marks the final stop of a major international collaboration between the Musée d’Orsay (Paris), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), and the Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris). The two featured masterpieces—Jeune homme à sa fenêtre and Partie de bateau—were previously on view at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Art Institute of Chicago as part of Caillebotte: Peindre les hommes.

Both works were recently acquired—Young Man at His Window by the Getty Museum in 2021 and Boating Party by the Musée d’Orsay in 2022—thanks to the patronage of LVMH, which enabled their preservation in public collections and this unique reunion in New York before they return home to France and California.