Caillebotte's Umbrellas and Other Rainy Days

Drops, Drizzles and Downpours in 19th and 20th Century Art

Apr 21, 2009

The fascinating and watery beauty of rain transforms works by artists Gustave Caillebotte, Hiroshige, J.M.W. Turner and Franz Marc.

To paint and capture what Percy Bysshe Shelley described as “the fitful alternations of the rain” is no small feat for an artist, requiring skill in the depiction of falling, rushing or pooled water, along with the changing backdrop of the sky. Rain comes in calmly soaking showers, summer sprinkles, violent torrents and freezing sleet about to turn to snow. Rain can be rejuvenating or miserably sodden, arriving after a heavy build-up of clouds or a scorching drought, leaving behind flooded fields, glazed streets, misty horizons — or the optical glory of a rainbow.

Caillebotte's Paris Street and Rainy River

Most art lovers are familiar with French Impressionist Camille Pissarro’s rainy views of the Boulevard Montmartre, or the damp umbrellas and pavement of Gustave Caillebotte’s famed 1877 Paris Street; Rainy Day. Another excellent Caillebotte painting which shows his rain-finesse is Yerres, Effect of Rain, with drops visibly hitting the river’s surface and creating circular ripple effects.

Caillebotte was a gardener in his spare time, a pursuit which heightened his consciousness of nature. He also studied engineering before committing himself to an artistic career, providing a scientific grounding that surely helped him to comprehend the physics of raindrops upon water and to replicate their effect on canvas.

Hiroshige's Great Bridge

Japanese Ukiyoe artist Hiroshige included the beautiful Evening Shower at Atake and The Great Bridge in his mid-1850s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo series. In this scene, people walk across a wooden bridge underneath umbrellas in Edo (Tokyo), part of a Japan still relatively uninfluenced by Western culture. Dark slashing lines are used to indicate heavy rain, along with the hurried motions and bent-over posture of those crossing the bridge. This particular work inspired Vincent van Gogh’s 1887 homage Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige), with a similar scene done in van Gogh’s own unique colors.

J.M.W. Turner's Rain, Steam, and Speed

While Joseph Mallord William (better known as J.M.W.) Turner is regarded as one of England’s foremost Romantic painters, his circa 1844 Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway indicates Turner’s growing consciousness of the industrial progress of his day. Turner traveled often, like many landscape artists, and found that the ordeal of getting from place to place was undeniably improved by the building of railroads.

Turner’s Great Western Railway painting fuses nature’s production of water in the form of rain with the steam of a locomotive, all intensified by the rushing speed of the engine. Turner offered not only a concept of the beauty of the machine, but almost a precursor to more abstract or Futurist motion-oriented work. Like in Hiroshige’s scene a boat drifts alongside the bridge, but it is still at the mercy of the weather, whereas Turner’s train appears unstoppably guided by the glow of its headlight.

Franz Marc's In the Rain

Before his death in World War I, German Expressionist Franz Marc was one of the founding members of the Munich artistic group Der Blaue Reiter. His 1912 In the Rain was painted around the same time that Marc met French artist Robert Delaunay, whose vivid, almost musical fluid use of color would be called Orphic Cubism. Marc’s rain scene is chaotic and bright, with glimpses of a man, a woman, a dog, leaves, trees, grass, and vibrantly unexpected notes of red. This kaleidoscopic rush floats beyond diagonal, prismatic lines which seem to represent the disturbances of downpours, and how they can be almost refreshing in a too-orderly modern world.

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The copyright of the article Caillebotte's Umbrellas and Other Rainy Days in Modern Art History is owned by Meg Nola. Permission to republish Caillebotte's Umbrellas and Other Rainy Days in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.