May 13, 2025
Luncheon of the Boating Party by French artist Pierre Auguste Renoir 1880.
seen from Finland
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seen from Japan
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seen from Japan
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seen from Malaysia
seen from China
Luncheon of the Boating Party by French artist Pierre Auguste Renoir 1880.
Boating Party, Royal National Park, NSW Australia. c 1880-90
Glass plate negative from Henry King.
Photo Source: Powerhouse Museum Sydney.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)
Renoir depicted many of his actual friends hanging out at his favorite restaurant, the Maison Fournaise. One can easily imagine that this was how Renoir would spend a sunny afternoon, or at least a slightly idealized version of that. The woman at the left is Aline Charigot, who would marry Renoir in 1890. She is featured in many of his paintings, including the 1883 Dance in the Country. They had three sons together, and she died of a heart attack in 1915 after visiting their son Jean who was badly injured in WWI. Renoir lived until 1919, and he achieved great fame during his lifetime. Although he was impaired by severe arthritis in the last 10 years of his life, he continued to paint and study art until the very end. When Matisse asked him why he still painted when it was so physically difficult, he answered, “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”
After watching a documentary with my mom about Renoir, I was surprised to learn that this painting was hanging in a museum just a few miles from the apartment where I had been living in Washington, DC for the previous seven years. On my next visit down to DC, my friends and I had a wonderful day at the Phillips Collection. Not a huge museum, but with a lot of little treasures hanging in an elegant old house. The highlight of the collection, for us, was Luncheon of the Boating Party. Taking up a whole wall, there were dozens of people sitting in front of it, taking it all in. There’s so much detail and texture, you can really get a feel for this world that Renoir wants to share with us, and you can’t help but come away feeling a sense of friendship and joy.
The Boating Party (2019)
• The Vigilant, Falmouth, Massachusetts. (A boating party aboard The Vigilant at a dock in Falmouth, Massachusetts)
Date: 31 July 1897
Place of origin: Falmouth (Barnstable county, Massachusetts)
Neil Folberg, After The Luncheon of the Boating Party by Renoir, 2003
Boating Party by Gustave Caillebotte
Boating party, 1893. Of course baby is along and nobody has a life jacket. Living dangerously, with Mary Cassatt