Paris museum buys Impressionist masterpiece thanks to LVMH donation

A French museum has acquired an Impressionist masterpiece thanks to a huge donation from luxury goods giant LVMH.

VMH donated the €43m (£38m) needed to acquire A Boating Party by 19th-century French artist Gustave Caillebotte.

The oil on canvas depicts a top-hatted rower rowing his boat on sluggish waters.

The work, remarkable for its realism, delicate colors and almost cinematic perspective – as if the artist were in the boat with the rower – was exhibited at the Musee d’Orsay on Monday.

It is the latest addition to the Paris museum’s already impressive collection of Impressionist art.

The painting was sold by Caillebotte’s descendants.

It was one of the last privately owned Impressionist masterpieces, said Jean-Paul Claverie, an adviser to LVMH boss Bernard Arnault.

Though a prolific painter himself, Caillebotte was better known as a multimillionaire patron of the French Impressionist artists who revolutionized Western painting in the late 19th century.

Born into a wealthy family, Caillebotte amassed an enviable collection of dozens of works by his friends Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and other artists whom he supported financially.

Before his death, he donated her artworks to the French state in hopes that they would be exhibited at the Louvre.

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After Caillebotte died in February 1894 at the age of 45, France took over 38 of his paintings by Monet, Renoir, Edouard Manet, Paul Cezanne and other artists for its national collection. This donation later formed the core of the Impressionist collection at the Musee d’Orsay, which opened in 1986 in a former train station.

His reputation as a major collector and donor of Impressionist art long overshadowed Caillebotte’s own contribution to the movement as a painter, partly because he did not include his own work in the collection he bequeathed to the French state.

When Caillebotte died unmarried and childless, his brother Martial Caillebotte inherited 175 of the artist’s works.

Much of his work remained in the hands of his descendants and only a sliver ended up in French museums.