In February 1876, Pierre-Auguste Renoir invited Gustave Caillebotte to take part in the second Impressionist exhibition—a follow-up to the group’s scandalous debut in 1874, which had no jury, no prize, and threw open its arms to radical painters rejected by the state-sponsored Salon, artists such as Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne. Caillebotte, a 27-year-old former soldier and a qualified lawyer, had only been studying at Paris’s École des Beaux-Arts for three years. But his breakout work, The Floor Scrapers—daring in its perspective, vivid colors, and salacious subject of half-naked male laborers—was progressive enough to be denied by the Salon in 1875. The Salon’s loss was Impressionism’s gain. In recent years, Caillebotte has entered the canon as a serious artist. Presenting around 120 works, this exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago focuses on his relationships with family, friends, and sitters. —Harry Seymour