Luncheon of the Boating Party

The painting, combining figures, still-life, and landscape in one work, depicts a group of Renoir's friends relaxing on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise restaurant 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, an affenpinscher; she replaced an earlier woman who sat for the painting but with whom Renoir became annoyed. ==Interactive image==

Subjects depicted As he often did in his paintings, Renoir included several of his friends in Luncheon of the Boating Party. Among them are the following: • The seamstress Aline Charigot, who is holding an affenpinscher dog, sits near the bottom left of the composition. Renoir married her in 1890, and they had three sons. • Charles Ephrussi—wealthy amateur art historian, collector, and editor of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts—appears wearing a top hat in the background. The younger man to whom Ephrussi appears to be speaking, more casually attired in a brown coat and cap, may be Jules Laforgue, his personal secretary and also a poet and critic. • Actress Ellen Andrée drinks from a glass in the center of the composition. Seated across from her is Baron Raoul Barbier, former mayor of colonial Saigon. • Placed within but peripheral to the party are the proprietor's daughter Louise-Alphonsine Fournaise and her brother, Alphonse Fournaise, Jr., both sporting traditional straw boaters and appearing to the left side of the image. Alphonsine is the smiling woman leaning on the railing; Alphonse, who was responsible for the boat rental, is the leftmost figure. • Also wearing boaters are figures appearing to be Renoir's close friends Eugène Pierre Lestringez, a bureaucrat, and Paul Lhote, himself an artist. Renoir depicts them flirting with the actress Jeanne Samary in the upper righthand corner of the painting. • In the right foreground, Gustave Caillebotte wears a white boater's shirt and flat-topped straw boater's hat as he sits backwards in his chair next to actress Angèle Legault and journalist . An art patron, painter, and important figure in the impressionist circle, Caillebotte was also an avid boatman and drew on that subject for several works. ====Close-ups==== Actual location The actual location of the scene is Maison Fournaise. ==Contemporary critical reception==

At the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition in 1882, the painting generally received praise from critics. "It is fresh and free without being too bawdy," wrote Paul de Charry in Le Pays, March 10, 1882. In La Vie Moderne (March 11, 1882), Armand Silvestre wrote, "...one of the best things [Renoir] has painted...There are bits of drawing that are completely remarkable, drawing – true drawing – that is a result of the juxtaposition of hues and not of line. It is one of the most beautiful pieces that this insurrectionist art by Independent artists has produced." Alternatively, published Albert Wolff's comment on March 2, 1882: "If he had learned to draw, Renoir would have a very pretty picture..." ==In popular culture==

• Actor Edward G. Robinson (1893-1973) is quoted as saying: “For over thirty years I made periodic visits to Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party in a Washington museum, and stood before that magnificent masterpiece hour after hour, day after day, plotting ways to steal it." • A homage to this painting appears in the final panel of On the False Earths (1977), the seventh volume of Jean-Claude Mézières and Pierre Christin's long-running comic book series Valérian and Laureline. • The painting was featured prominently in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film ''Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain — released in English as Amélie'' (2001). The most prominent reference is a comparison between the film's protagonist, Amélie, and the woman in the centre sipping a glass (Ellen Andrée), seemingly gazing out of the canvas, uninterested, while everyone else is enjoying the day together. The painting and its relationship to Amélie is also featured in the 2015 musical version of the film in the song "The Girl with the Glass". • Renoir's creation of the painting is dramatized in Susan Vreeland's 2007 novel Luncheon of the Boating Party. == See also ==