Skiffs, 1877 Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Gustave Caillebotte also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting Skiffs is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

After adding your artwork to the shopping cart, you will be able to check the delivery price using the Estimate Shipping and Tax tool.

The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

Those butter-yellow oar blades flicker across the water like brief flashes of sun caught and released. They are oddly assertive shapes, almost too large for the slim craft that carries them, and Caillebotte uses them as punctuation – beats in a sentence of movement.

Skiffs (1877) sets us high above the Yerres, as if we’ve leaned over a bridge rail and suddenly felt our stomachs tighten. Three flat-bottomed boats angle through the green river in a zig-zag that isn’t polite or symmetrical. The nearest rower, hat brim shading his face into anonymity, sits low in the skiff; the long shaft of the oar runs straight across the canvas like a bar. Behind him, the second figure repeats the action, then the third dissolves toward a bright slit of distance. Time seems to unspool in these repetitions, like a photographic sequence broken into three moments.

Look at the water. It isn’t a mirror; it’s a skin. Short, chopped strokes – a debt to Monet’s touch – skate over the surface in viridian, teal, and milky whites. Here and there, Caillebotte drops small, cool accents (little blue notes that read as ripples or reflections), and the whole river feels lightly restless. Along the lower left, a wedge of scraped, pale paint marks the wake; the brushwork abruptly changes direction, and you can almost hear the soft slap of oar and current.

Yet this is not Renoir’s shimmer of pure pleasure. The palette is bold, yes – those yellows against green sing – but the mood holds a hint of calculation. Caillebotte, a sailor and boat designer, knows exactly how easily such skiffs can tip. Perhaps that is why the viewpoint is so steep, the boats so narrow, the figures so steady and self-contained. Even the banks behave: the right side is a dense wall of foliage, while the left shows a neat line of posts receding, like a measured boundary.

Seen at the National Gallery of Art Washington USA, the picture still feels like a warm afternoon with a cool undercurrent. Caillebotte lets leisure look engineered – and that quiet tension is what makes it last.