Gustave Caillebotte

Caillebotte's wealth and youthfulness (he was 14 years younger than Degas) set him apart from the other French impressionists. A patron and publicist of the impressionist movement as well as a painter himself, he has been sorely neglected until recently. His pictures show us the world's sheer randomness as well as its patterns of order. Like Munch and Van Gogh, Caillebotte manipulated perspective to produce overwrought sensations of depth. He captured the boulevard's chaotic variety and the depersonalization of the modern city. His tautly focused realism, wide-angled spaces and cooly detached viewpoint upset his contemporaries, yet in today's cinematic culture his paintings resonate with familiarity. This superbly illustrated study by a New York University art professor does full justice, in text and pictures, to the ""forgotten Impressionist.'' (October 14)