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While the large golden building in the center anchors the composition. The viewer can follow the street to the left of the mammoth structure deep into the horizon. And then do the same with the street to the right of the building. Though not as deep. And then there is the foreground painting, dominated by the couple coming into our space in the right. And by the wide open brand new brick street to the left. In combination with a playful approach to a thoroughly modern sense of perspective. Look at the couple walking toward us. Their cut off just below the knees. Why? Surely there was plenty of space in this large painting for the artist to portray them in full. And the gentleman to our right walking towards them. He has been literally cut in half. Cropped half in and half out of this scene. Again, why? The answer I think has to do with photography, a new invention in the 19th century that Caillebotte and his contemporaries often responded to in their paintings. Seeking to insure that art remained relevant by portraying life on canvas in ways photography could not. Especially when it came to capturing perspective, light, and color. In this painting though, Caillebotte playfully seems to me, gives photography a little jab. Not only can paint portray life more richly and fully than a camera. If a painter chooses to, he too can cut off subjects at his knees. And crop human beings in two. In other words, anything you can do camera I can do better seems to be the message here, and that is a lot of fun.

In Paris Street Rainy Day, Caillebotte captures a momentary impression, from memory, of a Paris street just after a stormed has passed. So recently passed in fact, that the pedestrians still have their umbrellas up and notice that the brick street is still wet. Just as Monet captured scenes of everyday life and of nature portraying light and the subjects in the scene as they appeared to him in a fleeting moment of time Caillebotte does the same thing. The moment and time Caillebotte portrays in Paris Street Rainy Day also serves as an important metaphor. Those initial moments just after a rain storm seems to have passed. They suggest the initial period of civil calm that followed bloody fighting in the streets of Paris. Fighting even took place in this very intersection, just before the painting was completed in 1877.

Significantly the painting also captures in vivid color the changes in that the Paris cityscape and street corners, just implemented by Napoleon the 3rd after a trip to England where classical architecture was settled on white broad boulevards. Notice also deep in the background just beyond the center building over the tip of the central gentleman's umbrella, the scafle showing how recent this work is and that it's still ongoing. Napoleon the 3rd had more in mind than civic pride and classical architectural taste however. Since police and soldiers under his charge could form up and maneuver in such wide spaces, whereas previously cold, angry disinfected, and angry Parisians could easily block a medieval street for hours or days. And so the respectable middle class Parisians depicted here in this work are out of doors on a clean safe street dressed to show. Resuming life again. Although the presence of the umbrella sure leave some uncertainty about whether or not the storm has really passed or has just taken a brief resting.

This is a urban modern street scene transformed into something beautiful and complex and alive. Notice the alert interested gaze of the couple in the foreground as they look at something of interest unknown to us off canvas. And Caillebotte gives the scene plenty of room to unfold much Napoleon the 3rd's new streets. There is also a hint of sadness in the piece with the rain, the haze of the sky, and the complete lack of interaction. Among most of the people portrayed on the street, perhaps raising more modern themes of the alienation of urban life and a lack of communication between people who ironically spend their whole lives practically or literally on top of one another in major cities.