Calf's Head and Ox Tongue
Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848–1894)
c. 1882
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 73 × 54 cm (29 × 21 in.); Framed: 87.7 × 69.3 × 7.7 cm (34 1/2 × 27 1/4 × 3 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Adult profiles and older: its museum's description or title mentions violence, death or gore. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Gustave Caillebotte may have been inspired by the butcher’s shop below his family home in Paris when he painted this bloody scene of animal parts ready for human consumption. Calf’s Head and Ox Tongue confronts viewers with objects that are visually unpleasant and yet rendered with highly decorative pastel colors and soft brushstrokes. Such still lifes are among Caillebotte’s most original compositions and stand in contrast to the attractive, highly marketable still lifes of his contemporaries Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
