Calf's Head and Ox Tongue

Caillebotte's Calf's Head and Ox Tongue of 1882 belongs to a series of unsparing butcher-shop still lifes that shocked visitors to the seventh Impressionist exhibition. At a moment when Impressionism was associated with leisure, gardens, and bourgeois comfort, Caillebotte deliberately chose the raw materials of the Parisian food market — slaughtered heads, cut tongues laid on marble — as a subject demanding unflinching description. The influence of Chardin's materialist tradition is present, but Caillebotte's handling is cooler and more confrontational, stripping away any decorative softening.

Pale grey-white marble contrasts with the warm pinks and reds of the meat, in dense brushwork capturing the varied textures of skin, fat, and muscle. Light falls evenly from the left, casting shallow shadows that emphasise physicality over pictorial arrangement.