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.

The Luncheon of the Boating Party at a glance

• Artist: Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
• Painted: 1880–1881, Chatou, France
• Movement: Impressionism
• Original: The Phillips Collection, Washington DC
• Medium: Oil on canvas, 130 × 175 cm

Common questions about The Luncheon of the Boating Party

Own a hand-painted Luncheon of the Boating Party

This is not a print. Every painting we sell is reproduced in oils on canvas, by hand, by professional artists — no giclée, no computer-generated technique.

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.
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Framing Options: You have 3 choices

Option 1. Choose an outer frame - see images below.

You only need to choose one and the painting will be sent to you framed and ready to hang.

* Below is an example of a customer who chose the Gold Ornate frame

Option 2: Choose a Gallery Wrap Stretched Painting.

If you want the frameless modern gallery wrap look then you only need to choose Stretched Gallery Wrap from the finish option dropdown.

You receive your stretched gallery wrap painting ready to hang - with a hanging wire attached behind.

The back of the Stretched Gallery Wrap looks like the image below - it has a hanging wire!

Option 3: Choose Canvas Only if you want to frame the painting yourself.

Your painting will be sent to you in an art tube - you can then frame it yourself or take it to your local framer.