Paris Street; Rainy Day (also known as Paris: A Rainy Day) is an 1877 oil painting by the French artist Gustave Caillebotte. The piece depicts the Place de Dublin, an intersection near the Gare Saint-Lazare, a railroad station in north Paris. One of Caillebotte's best known works, it debuted at the Third Impressionist Exhibition of 1877 and is currently owned by the Art Institute of Chicago. Art Institute curator Gloria Groom described the piece as "the great picture of urban life in the late 19th century."

Caillebotte's interest in photography is evident in the painting. The figures in the foreground appear slightly "out of focus", those in the mid-distance (the carriage and the pedestrians in the middle of the intersection) have sharp edges, and then the background becomes progressively indistinct.

Considered the masterpiece of his career, Paris Street; Rainy Day displays the hallmarks of Gustave Caillebotte's mature style: a modern urban subject, realistically depicted; a peculiar and insistent spatial order; and a sense of time momentarily frozen. Examine the painting closely to find these stylistic features. Although the buildings may not look modem to us, they were new in the artist's lifetime. What in this painting would have been considered modern in 1876? What else might be modem about the subject matter? How are the people, buildings, and streets depicted? What gives the viewer the sense that time has suddenly stopped?

Caillebotte's rigorously controlled technique mirrors the pristine modernity of Haussmann's rebuilt Paris. He experimented with a plunging perspective to create his unique urban view. The composition is divided into a giant "plus" sign. Locate the horizontal and vertical elements which divide the painting into four parts. (The lamppost and its shadow divide the painting vertically; the horizon line divides the painting horizontally.) Are these four quadrants equally divided? What looms forward on the right side of the painting? What zooms backwards into the distance on the left? Look closely into each quadrant: how are the foreground and background tied together?

The Art Institute of Chicago bought it in 1964 for an undisclosed price. The purchase was brilliant and bold, says Gloria Groom, the Art Institute's curator of 19th-century European painting, because the world had not yet recognized Caillebotte's talent. In 1995, the painting was the signature piece at a French retrospective of Caillebotte. It remains one of the few Caillebottes in any public collection; most of the artist's work Paris Street Rainy Weather is privately owned by his family.

Gustave Caillebotte (1848-94) was born into an upper-crust Parisian family who had made their fortune in textiles. Caillebotte was a lawyer, but after receiving a large inheritance, he decided to pursue painting and horticulture. He enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet, of whom he later became a patron. He organized group impressionist shows including one in Paris in 1877, which featured his own Paris Street; Rainy Day.