Luncheon of the Boating Party

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party belongs to The Phillips Collection. Painted in 1880–1881, it shows a group of the artist's friends relaxing on a riverside restaurant balcony beside the Seine. Standing in front of it, you can pick out individual sitters, from the painter's future wife to a fellow artist in boating clothes.

Where to see it

Luncheon of the Boating Party is held by The Phillips Collection, which is also listed as its location. The canvas measures 130.2 × 175.6 cm, large enough that you can step back to take in the whole table and then move closer to study individual faces. Display arrangements can change, so please check The Phillips Collection's official website for current display status and visiting information before you go.

What to look for in person

Aline Charigot and the small dog

Start in the left foreground, where Aline Charigot, who later married Renoir, plays with a small affenpinscher dog. She was not the painter's first choice for this spot: she replaced an earlier model with whom Renoir had become annoyed. Her attention is fixed on the dog rather than on the people around her, which gives this corner of the canvas a quiet, absorbed mood. Because she went on to become Renoir's wife, this figure carries a personal weight within a picture otherwise filled with friends and acquaintances from his circle.

Caillebotte in the lower right

In the lower right corner, a man in a white boating shirt and straw boater sits backwards on his chair. This is Gustave Caillebotte, a fellow painter. His relaxed, informal pose anchors that side of the composition and sets the tone of an easy afternoon among friends. Compare his river clothes with the top hat worn in the background by Charles Ephrussi, editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. The contrast between the two shows how this gathering brought together the leisure culture of the river and the Paris art world.

The Fournaise family and the balcony

The setting is a balcony of the Maison Fournaise, a restaurant beside the Seine at Chatou, and the owner's family is part of the picture. Alphonsine Fournaise, the owner's daughter, leans on the railing, while her brother Alphonse Fournaise Jr. is the figure at the far left. Notice how the railing runs across the scene, separating the crowded table from the open view beyond. Fourteen people fill the space, five women and nine men; try finding each of them as your eye moves from the foreground table toward the background.

About the painting

Renoir painted Luncheon of the Boating Party in 1880–1881. The scene gathers his friends on a balcony of the Maison Fournaise, a restaurant on the Seine at Chatou, France, and turns a shared meal into a large group portrait set outdoors. Fourteen figures appear, and many of them can be named today because the critic Julius Meier-Graefe identified the sitters in 1912. Among them are Aline Charigot, later Renoir's wife; the painter Gustave Caillebotte; Charles Ephrussi, editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts; and two members of the family that ran the restaurant, Alphonsine and Alphonse Fournaise Jr.

The art historian John House noted similarities between the composition and Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana, a painting Renoir had studied at the Louvre. Keeping this comparison in mind can be useful in the gallery: look at how Renoir arranges a crowded table of figures across a wide canvas, much as earlier painters staged large banquet scenes.

The painting had a busy early history. The dealer Paul Durand-Ruel bought it in 1881, sold it to the Paris banker Ernest Balensi, and bought it back in April 1882. That same year it was shown at the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition, where three critics singled it out as the best painting on view. Decades later, in 1923, Duncan Phillips acquired it for $125,000 from Durand-Ruel's son. It remains in The Phillips Collection, where its size, 130.2 × 175.6 cm, lets visitors read it both as a whole composition and as a series of individual portraits.