Bring your favorites together in your free personal gallery.
Your galleryCalf's Head and Ox Tongue
Look first
- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Compare the pale, rounded calf’s head with the long red tongue beside it, then look at the hooks and the metal rail along the bottom.
Caillebotte may have taken this subject from the butcher’s shop below his family’s home in Paris. A calf’s head and an ox tongue hang from hooks against a grey wall, painted in soft strokes of pink, violet and white. The Art Institute contrasts still lifes like this with the more pleasing and easier to sell still lifes of Monet and Renoir.
Oil on canvas · 73 × 54 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Impressionism
Look again
What do you notice now?
Try a quick sketch
Take a minute to sketch on any paper. No upload needed.
What did you draw first? What did you leave out?
Details and source
- Museum title
- Calf's Head and Ox Tongue
- Artist
- Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848–1894)
- Date
- c. 1882
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 73 × 54 cm (29 × 21 in.); Framed: 87.7 × 69.3 × 7.7 cm (34 1/2 × 27 1/4 × 3 in.)
- Credit line
- Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.