Gustave Caillebotte was a French memeber and partron of the Impressionist painters, even though he painted in a much more realistic manner than many other artists in the group. He was also known for his early interest in photography as an art.

Gustave Caillebotte was born in 1848 to an upper-class Parisian family. His father had inherited the family's military textile business and was also a judge at the Seine department's Tribunal de Commerce. Caillebotte was born at home and lived in that house until 1866 when his father had a home built on rue de Miromesnil. Caillebotte earned a law degree in 1868 and a license to practice law in 1870. Shortly afterwards, he was drafted to fight in the Franco-Prussian war, and served in the Garde Nationale Mobile de la Seine before turning to painting.

In 1872 Caillebotte joined the studio of painter Léon Bonnat, where he began to seriously study painting, developing an accomplished style in a relatively short period of time. In 1873, Caillebotte entered into the École des Beaux-Arts, but did not stay there very long apparently because in 1874, he inherited his father’s fortune and when his mother died in 1878, he and his two brothers divided the remainder of the family fortune.

In the same year of 1874, Caillebotte met and befriended several artists working outside the official French Academy, including Edgar Degas and Giuseppe de Nittis. This meeting gave Gustave access to a whole group of independent artists. He attended the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874 but did not participate until 1876.

He was greatly influenced by his friends although his techniques did not follow that of his peers. Many of his early paintings evoke his well-to-do family background. He based his early cityscapes on linear geometry and perspective of city streets. He divided his compositions into equal sections and then adjusted to fit the structural design of his canvas. In the 1870's, after joining the Impressionists group, Caillebotte turned away from the strict precision which governed his earlier works and moved with freedom of touch and broader more colorful handling of his paint.

At the second exhibition in 1876 if the Impressionists, at Auguste Renoir’s invitation, Caillebotte joined them. From then on he was one of the most regular participants in their exhibitions. He organized the show of 1877 and made great efforts to persuade Claude Monet to exhibit in 1879.

Late in his life, Caillebotte acquired a property at Petit-Gennevilliers, on the banks of the Seine near Argenteuil, in 1881, and moved there permanently in 1888. He ceased showing his work at age 34 and devoted himself to gardening and to building and racing yachts, and spent much time with his brother, and his friend Renoir, who often came to stay, and engaged in far ranging discussions on art, politics, literature, and philosophy. ALthough he never married, he had a serious relationship with Charlotte Berthier, a lower class woman eleven years his junior, to whom he left a sizable annuity.

Gustave Caillebotte inherited a great fortune from his family and from that point on, he helped other struggling artists and, unfortunately for him, became most known for the art works he purchased rather than those he painted.