Calf's Head and Ox Tongue

c. 1882

Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848–1894)

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.

Status: On View, Gallery 201
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Gustave Caillebotte
Title: Calf's Head and Ox Tongue
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1877–1887
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 73 × 54 cm (29 × 21 in.); Framed: 87.7 × 69.3 × 7.7 cm (34 1/2 × 27 1/4 × 3 in.)
Credit Line: Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment
Reference Number: 1999.561
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/154121/manifest.json

Durand-Ruel, Paris, Exposition rétrospective d’oeuvres de G. Caillebotte, exh. cat. (E. Moreau, 1894), p. 7, cat. 94.
Marie Berhaut, Caillebotte, with an introduction by Daniel Wildenstein (Wildenstein, 1951), cat. 162.
Marie Berhaut, Caillebotte: Sa vie et son oeuvre; Catalogue raisonné des peintures et pastels (Bibliothèque des Arts/Wildenstein Foundation, 1978), pp. 56; 156, cat. 222 (ill.).
Marie Berhaut, Gustave Caillebotte: Catalogue raisonné des peintures et pastels, with assistance by Sophie Pietri, new and expanded ed. (Wildenstein Institute, 1994), pp. 43; 165, cat. 244 (ill.).
Éric Darragon, Caillebotte, Tout l’art (Flammarion, 1994), p. 102 (ill.).
Douglas W. Druick, “Natures mortes,” in Anne Distel, Douglas Druick, Gloria Groom, and Rodolphe Rapetti, Gustave Caillebotte, 1848–1894, trans. Jeanne Bouniort, exh. cat. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1994), pp. 330–31, cat. 110 (ill.).
Douglas W. Druick, “Still Lifes,” in Anne Distel, Douglas Druick, Gloria Groom, and Rodolphe Rapetti, with Julia Sagraves and an essay by Kirk Varnedoe, Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist, exh. cat. (Musée d’Orsay/Art Institute of Chicago, 1995), pp. 250–51, cat. 96 (ill.).
Michael Fried, “Caillebotte’s Impressionism,” Representations 66 (Spring 1999), pp. 34; 35, fig. 23.
Patrick Shaw Cable, “Questions of Work, Class, Gender, and Style in the Art and Life of Gustave Caillebotte” (Ph.D. diss., Case Western Reserve University, 2000), pp. viii; 87; 290, fig. 47.
“New in the Galleries: New Acquisition,” News and Events: The Art Institute of Chicago Member’s Magazine (Nov./Dec. 2000), p. 5 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, “European Painting,” Annual Report, 1999–2000 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2000), p. 10.
“A Selection of 2000 Museum Acquisitions,” Apollo 152, 466 (Dec. 2000), p. 46 (ill.).
Eliza E. Rathbone and George T. M. Shackelford, Impressionist Still Life, exh. cat. (Phillips Collection/Abrams, 2001), p. 138.
Douglas W. Druick, “Caillebotte’s Still Lifes,” in Gustave Caillebotte and the Fashioning of Identity in Impressionist Paris, ed. Norma Broude (Rutgers University Press, 2002), p. 212.
Gloria Groom, “Calf’s Head and Ox Tongue,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 30, 1 (Spring 2004), pp. 66–67 (ill.), 95.
Pierre Wittmer, “Au temps de l’absinthe: Du marché à la cuisine, puis à la table des naturalists,” in Juliane Cosandier, Caillebotte: Au coeur de l’impressionnisme, assisted by Sylvie Wuhrmann, exh. cat. (Fondation de l’Hermitage/Bibliothèque des Arts, 2005), p. 107, fig. 6.
Beate Steinhauser, Les “natures mortes” dans “Le ventre de Paris” d’Émile Zola: Lieux de rencontre entre littérature et peinture, Europäische Hochschulschriften, series 13: Langue et littérature française 283 (P. Lang, 2006), pp. 38; 136, fig. 15.
Gloria Groom and Douglas Druick, with the assistance of Dorota Chudzicka and Jill Shaw, The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago/Kimbell Art Museum, 2008), pp. 84–85, cat. 36 (ill.). Simultaneously published as Gloria Groom and Douglas Druick, with the assistance of Dorota Chudzicka and Jill Shaw, The Age of Impressionism at the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 84–85, cat. 36 (ill.).
Paula Young Lee, “Stripped: Gustave Caillebotte and the Carcass of Modern Life,” in Visions of the Industrial Age, 1830–1914: Modernity and the Anxiety of Representation in Europe, ed. Minsoo Kang and Amy Woodson-Boulton (Ashgate, 2008), pp. 287; 288, fig. 13.6.
Karin Sagner, “Gustave Caillebotte: An Impressionist and Photography,” in Gustave Caillebotte: An Impressionist and Photography, ed. Karin Sagner and Max Hollein, in cooperation with Ulrich Pohlmann, exh. cat. (Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt/Hirmer, 2012), pp. 29–30.
Karin Sagner and Max Hollein, eds., in cooperation with Ulrich Pohlmann, Gustave Caillebotte: An Impressionist and Photography, exh. cat. (Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt/Hirmer, 2012), pp. 170–71, cat. 128 (ill.); 236.
Stephen F. Eisenman, The Cry of Nature: Art and the Making of Animal Rights (Reaktion, 2013), pp. 171–72 (ill.).
Mary Morton, with Camille Mathieu, Galina Olmsted, and George T. M. Shackelford, “Catalog,” in Mary Morton and George T. M. Shackelford, Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye, with essays by Michael Marrinan, Alexandra K. Wettlaufer, Elizabeth Benjamin, Stéphane Guégan, and Sarah Kennel, exh. cat. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C./Kimbell Art Museum, 2015), pp. 187, cat. 34/fig. 1 (detail); 196, cat. 34 (detail); 197, cat. 34 (ill.).
Mary Morton and George T. M. Shackelford, Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye, with essays by Michael Marrinan, Alexandra K. Wettlaufer, Elizabeth Benjamin, Stéphane Guégan, and Sarah Kennel, exh. cat. (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C./Kimbell Art Museum, 2015), p. 278.
“Cat. 3: Calf’s Head and Ox Tongue, c. 1882” in Caillebotte Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, ed. Gloria Groom and Genevieve Westerby (Art Institute of Chicago, 2015). https://publications.artic.edu/caillebotte/reader/paintingsanddrawings/section/574/574_anchor.

Paris, Durand-Ruel, Exposition rétrospective d’oeuvres de G. Caillebotte, June 4–16, 1894, cat. 94.
Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Gustave Caillebotte, 1848–1894, Sept. 16, 1994–Jan. 9, 1995, cat. 110 (ill.); Art Institute of Chicago, Gustave Caillebotte: Urban Impressionist, Feb. 18–May 28, 1995, cat. 96 (ill.); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, June 22–Sept. 10, 1995.
Fort Worth, Tex., Kimbell Museum of Art, The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, June 29–Nov. 2, 2008, cat. 36 (ill.).
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Gustave Caillebotte: Ein Impressionist und die Fotografie, Oct. 18, 2012–Jan. 20, 2013, cat. 128 (ill.); Gemeentemuseum den Haag, The Hague, Gustave Caillebotte: Een impressionist en de fotografie, Feb. 2–May 20, 2013.
Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye, June 28–Oct. 4, 2015, cat. 34 (ill.); Fort Worth, Tex., Kimbell Art Museum, Nov. 8, 2015–Feb. 14, 2016.

The artist (died 1894); by descent to the artist’s family, 1894 [per Berhaut 1994, p. 165, cat. 244 (ill.)]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, though Galerie Cazeau-Béraudière, Paris, 1999.

Cat. 3 Calf’s Head and Ox Tongue, c. 1882

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.