Massif de fleurs, jardin du Petit Gennevilliers

Caillebotte's Petit-Gennevilliers garden paintings form one of the most coherent late bodies of work among the Impressionist generation. The massif de fleurs — massed flower beds — allowed him to treat the garden as a near-abstract arrangement of colour and texture, different from the structured paths and pergolas of his other garden subjects. These works were rarely exhibited during his lifetime and were largely unknown to the public until after his death, making them among the least studied major works of the Impressionist period.

The composition is structured as a dense frontal mass of flowers — dahlias, geraniums, varied annuals — painted with thick, short strokes in which individual brushmarks read simultaneously as single blooms and as passages of colour. The low vantage point and high horizon eliminate sky almost entirely, making the flower mass fill the canvas edge to edge.