Gustave Caillebotte, born into a wealthy family,…

Gustave Caillebotte, born into a wealthy family, had trained to be an engineer but became interested in painting and studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

An artist of remarkable abilities, the twenty-seven year-old Caillebotte paints The Parquet Floor Scrapers (1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris) a realistic scene of urban craftsmen busily at work.