Villas at Trouville

Caillebotte visited Trouville on the Normandy coast at various points in his life, and Villas at Trouville reflects the particular character of the Norman resort town — a destination for fashionable Parisians since the 1860s, associated with Monet's beach scenes and Boudin's celebrated studies of tourists on the shore. Caillebotte's approach is distinctively architectural: rather than focusing on figures at leisure or the moving sea, he frames the substantial bourgeois villas themselves as the subject, their gardens and façades carrying the social meaning of the scene.

Warm creams and whites of the villa facades contrast with garden vegetation and a blue sky rendered in broken horizontal strokes. Architecture is painted with greater precision than the landscaped surroundings, echoing Caillebotte's instinct for structure even in relaxed outdoor subjects.