The impression of a painter, their intransigent friend, was not left with a brush, but the stroke of his pen.

Nearly everyone recognizes one of the following names: Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Manet, Pissarro, Sisley. Collectively, these seven artists comprise the core of the French Impressionist canon. But there’s one impressionist painter whose name has all but been forgotten: Gustave Caillebotte. Caillebotte was not only an artist, but a collector of the impressionists — his friends and contemporaries — at a time when the art establishment roundly rejected their aesthetic.

Caillebotte died of a stroke at the age of 46 in 1894, but not before willing his collection to the French state, stipulating its exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris. The bequest included 16 Monets, 8 Renoirs, 8 Degas, 5 Cézannes, 4 Manets, 18 Pissarros, and 9 Sisleys.

One hundred years later, James Cutting, a Cornell University psychologist was the first to recognize that the only common thread among the impressionist canon was a single collector: Gustave Caillebotte, who ironically never made much of an effort to sell the 400 stunning works he painted himself.

WAVE 0.6 is the second WAVE in RUNWAY 5, a limited pre-release series of five WAVES spotlighting watershed works of art in debt to their context.