Renoir | The Luncheon of the Boating Party

About The Luncheon of the Boating Party by Renoir

Renoir painted this between 1880 and 1881 on the balcony of the Maison Fournaise, a riverside restaurant on the island of Chatou on the Seine, a short train ride west of Paris. It was where Parisians went on Sundays to row, eat and drink, and Renoir went there for years.

Fourteen people sit and stand under a striped awning after lunch, at a table still covered in bottles, glasses and the wreckage of the meal. Nearly all of them were real friends of his, painted from life over several months as they came and went. The young woman playing with the small dog at the front left is Aline Charigot, a seamstress Renoir later married. The man straddling a chair backwards in a straw vest at the lower right is Gustave Caillebotte — a painter himself, and the patron who kept much of Impressionism afloat.

It is a picture with no subject beyond a good afternoon. That was the point. The Impressionists were arguing that ordinary modern leisure was worth the size and ambition previously reserved for history painting, and this is the most complete statement of that case anyone made.

Own a hand-painted Luncheon of the Boating Party

Renoir painted skin as a surface that catches everything around it. Look closely at any face here and it is not a flesh tone — it is pink shot through with green from the foliage, blue from the shadows, warm orange where sunlight comes through the striped awning. The figures feel like they are sitting in real outdoor light because their skin is full of the colours of that light. Reproduction averages those small adjacent strokes into a single mixed tone, and the faces flatten into ordinary pink. Painted by hand in oils, the separate tints stay separate, and the afternoon light comes back into the people.

• A range of sizes — choose yours above. The original is wide, and the composition needs the width to hold all fourteen figures comfortably.
• Framed and ready to hang, gallery wrap, or rolled canvas if you would rather frame it yourself.
• 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions.
• Free delivery Australia-wide. Australian owned and operated, with a local contact you can actually reach.