UNIT 4
Luncheon of the Boating Party
Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881, French: Le déjeuner des canotiers) is a painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It is currently housed in The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.
The painting depicts a group of Renoir's friends relaxing on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise along the Seine river in Chatou, France. The painter and art patron, Gustave Caillebotte, is seated in the lower right. Renoir's future wife, Aline Charigot, is in the foreground playing with a small dog. In this painting Renoir has captured a great deal of light. As you can see the main focus of light is coming from the large opening in the balcony, beside the large singleted man in the hat. The singlets of both men in the foreground and the table-cloth both work together to reflect this light and send it through the whole composition.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir's The Luncheon of the Boating Party, painted during the years 1880-1881, uses costume, color, and setting to convey the pleasures of a sunny afternoon among friends. Renoir's palette has a golden glow; for instance, the women's fair skin flushes in the warmth of the sun. The straw hats and bare arms of some members of the party signal the rising heat. Renoir set The Luncheon of the Boating Party at an establishment he knew well -- the upper terrace of the Restaurant Fournaise -- and he portrayed his friends and his future wife (in the lefthand corner) among the company.
Renoir, along with Rubens, Fragonard and Matisse, is one of painting’s apostles of pure pleasure. But unadulterated pleasure can be a dangerous thing. It’s very easy to overdose. Here Renoir turns down the volume, adopting a more traditional linear style (especially for the man in the right foreground) that hints at the dramatic turn Renoir’s work will take over the next few years as he renounces Impressionism and attempts to paint in a more Ingresque manner. In addition to accommodating the casual mood of the piece and giving our eyes a bit of a rest, Renoir’s more linear brushwork sets off by contrast the work’s loosest and most beautiful passage, the large still life on the foreground table.
The brushwork is incredibly loose and sketchy, each glass a mere outline brought to life and given volume by Renoir’s kinetic brushstrokes and those everpresent white highlights. A few touches of red paint put a little wine in the bottoms of the glasses. When we back up a few feet, the brushstrokes resolve into form, but they remain active, alive and sparkling with color and light. This loose and obvious brushwork is the only kind of work shown in Renoir’s leisurely painting, and it shimmers out toward the viewer with the power to overturn the entire image. This is where the painter gives us an opportunity to pull back the curtain and see the mechanics behind his illusion, the careful painterly work that underlies all this carefree play. It is a reminder that the entire large painting is but a construction of pigment and brushes, and that even the most solid-looking things, like the arm of the man in the right foreground, are as insubstantial as the sketchy glasses near his hand. Like the leisure activity it portrays, Renoir’s painting is an elaborately conceived and constructed thing. Both the activity and the image are characteristic products of bourgeois society, designed to distract viewers and participants from the mundane realities of life in this new world.