A current exhibition of the paintings of Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) at the Art Institute in Chicago is quite remarkable. It demonstrates the eye, the hand, and the sensibility of this great late-Impressionist painter. But the exhibition is remarkable in another way as well: there is almost no evidence in the paintings on exhibit, or the curatorial texts that support the exhibition, that conveys the intense and prolonged social, political, and military conflict of the period from the late...
