Yearpainted: 1880-1881

Title:
Artist:
Medium:
Yearpainted:
The Luncheon of the Boating Party
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (f 841-1919), French
Oil on Canvas, 5lx 68 in.
1880-1881
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, France on February 25,1841. His father was a tailor and his
mother a dressmaker. When Renoir was three, his family moved to an apartment in Paris where he grew up
and spent most of his life.
From 1854 to 1858 Renoir was apprenticed to a decorator of porcelain. He also studied drawing in the
evenings and from I 864, received permission to paint copies in the Louwe. In 1860-61 , Renoir began his
formal art training, studying in the studio of Charles Gleyre and entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (School
of Fine Arts) in 1862. At the art school Renoir formed friendships with Claude Monet (1840-1926),
Frederic Bazille (1841-1870) and Alfred Sisley (1839-1899). The four artists, who had painted together
outdoors during their student years, later were the founding members of the movement that became known
as Impressionism.
By 1874, when Renoir participated in the first Impressionist group exhibition,
he had also come to know
Paul Cezame (1839-1906), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) and Berthe Morisot (1841-1895). In the late
1870's Renoir gained critical recognition and achieved financial security for the first time in his career. He
received commissions to paint portraits of prominent Parisians and began to exhibit and sell his works
through the Paris gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel who gave him his first one-man exhibition in 1883.
Around 1880, Renoir met Aline Charigot, whom he later married in 1890. In 1885, their first son Pierre
was born, followed by Jean (the well-known filmmaker) in 1894, and Claude in 1901. By the 1890's, the
artist and his family began to spend most of their time away from Paris, in Essoyes (the childhood home of
his wife) and in Cagnes. Renoir's paintings from the 1880's onward reflect his continued interest in
classical art and the female figure. Despite suffering from debilitating arthritis, Renoir continued to paint
through his later years and began to work with sculpture in 19 I 3 . He painted until the day he died at his
home in Cagnes at the age of 78.
FACTS ABOUT RENOIR THAT STUDENTS WILL ENJOY:
Renoir's parents liked to call him Auguste. While Auguste was growing up, his family apartment was close
to the royal palace. Auguste would play in the royal courtyard. He and his friends would play marbles and
"cops and robbers". The queen ofFrance would often throw candy from her balcony to try to quiet the
children down. Auguste also liked to take his father's tailor's chalk and draw pictures all over the walls and
floors of the family shop.
When Auguste was 13, he got a job painting china plates and vases. He learned to paint flowers frst. He
worked so fast that he made a lot of money for a kid. At lunchtime, he'd race over to the Louwe, a famous
art museum in Paris, so he could study the great paintings there. But when somebody invented a machine to
print pictures on plates, Auguste was out of a job. So, Renoir decided to go to art school. When he and his
artist friends weren't painting, they were talking about painting. They thought that landscapes should be
painted outside and not in the studio. This was a new idea for their time. It was called, "en plein air".
Once, when Renoir was out in the woods painting, he was so busy that he didn't notice that a deer was
behind him watching him work!
Renoir and his artist friends, the new style artists painted differently than old style artists; 1) Old style
artists painted events in history or Greek and Roman Legends. Renoir and his friends painted what they
saw...even if it was a railroad bridge or an ugly factory. 2) Old style artists painted heroes, famous people,
and gods and goddesses who all looked perfect and beautiful. Renoir and the new style artists did portraits
of ordinary people, happy or sad, doing everyday stuff like ironing or playing cards. 3) Old style artists
liked dark colors and lots of detail. New style artists used quick brushstrokes and bright colors and tried to
paint at a glance. 4) Old style artists painted inside their studios. Renoir and his new style artist friends
painted outdoors a lot , "en plein air".
Back in Renoir's time, when artists in Paris wanted to make money, they had to get their paintings into a
special show called the Salon. The judges of the Salon were very strict and stuffy. They didn't like the new
style of painting. When Renoir finally got one of his paintings in the Salon, the picture was hung way up
high in the dark so people could barely see it. Even then, people made fun of it. It was a picture of his
girlfriend, Aline in a white dress. They said it looked sloppy and unfinished but Renoir didn't listen to the
criticism and kept on painting.
Renoir liked painting people best. He liked to paint pretty pictures that would make people feel good when
they looked at them. He said, "There are enough ugly things in life for us not to add to them.
Renoir married Aline and they had three sons, Pierre, Jean and Claude. He loved to use his wife and
children as models for his paintings. They were a happy family and Renoir loved to watch his children
play. He worried about them a lot and even cut offthe corners oftables and got rid ofsharp edges on all the
furniture so they wouldn't hurt themselves. Renoir also believed his kids should have a lot of freedom.
They didn't go to school until they were ten. His son Jean grew up to become a famous filmmaker.
Once, when Renoir was visiting Italy, he took a long walk and came to a river that he couldn't get across.
Some peasant women picked him up, formed a line across the river and passed him from one to another
until he reached the other sidel
One day while Renoir was riding his bike, he hit a puddle, fell off, and broke his arm. He had to switch
from painting with his right hand to his left. Luckily, his left side was just as talented as his right.
When Renoir was old, his hands became crippled and claw-like. Someone had to put the paint brush in his
hands for him and take it out when he was finished painting. But while he painted he was happy and
hummed little tunes. Renoir painted every day for 60 years. He painted approximately 6,000 pictures and
he lived to see one of his paintings hanging in the Louwe with all the great paintings he had studied as a
young man. On the day he died he created a small painting of some flowers and said, "I think I'm
beginning to understand something about this."
LUNCHEON OF THE BOATING PARTY
Leisure Pastimes along the Seine
The upper left hand corner of Luncheon of the Boating Party,beyond the awning. Renoir included the bluegray outline of the Chatou railroad bridge - a visual reminder of the government's recently completed
transportation projects that had made the riverside fete possible. By the 1860's, new French railroad lines
changed many rural areas along surrounding Paris into suburban sites for leisure. The railroad crossed the
winding path of the Seine, providing weary Parisians with many accessible weekend retreats. From his
Paris studio Renoir, for example, could walk ten minutes to the Saint-Lazarelrain station and catch on the
half -hour -- a train for the suburbs. One of Renoir's favorite places was the town of Chatou where, on a
nearby island, he painted Luncheon ofthe Boating Party that depicts a group ofhis friends on the balcony
overlooking the Seine at the Maison Fournaise.
Once the exclusive domain of the upper class, the riverside towns of Bougival, Asnieres, Argenteuil and
Chatou were transformed into popular retreats for all members of society. Many amusements including
guinguettes (see vocabulary list), dance halls, bath houses, boat rentals and sailing clubs were established
to cater to the growing numbers of weekend revelers. The natural characteristics of the Seine often
determined the sport of choice in certain towns. In Chatou, the popular pastime was rowing.
The Maison Fournaise
Parisians would flock to Chatou's Maison Fournaise to rent rowing skiffs, eat a good meal or stay the night.
In 1857, the entrepreneur Alphonse Fournaise bought land in Chatou to open a boat rental, restaurant. and
small hotel for the new tourist trade. From the mid 1870's Renoir often visited the Maison Fournaise to
enjoy its convivial atmosphere and rural beauty. He painted scenes of the restaurant, as well as several
portraits of Fournaise family members and landscapes of the surrounding area. In fact, Renoir occasionally
traded paintings with the Fournaise family for food and lodging.
Renoir and Friends
Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party not only conveys the light-hearted leisurely mood of the Maison
Fournaise, but also reflects the character of mid- to late nineteenth century French social structure. The
restaurant welcomed customers of many classes including bourgeois businessmen, society women, artists
(Renoir and Caillebotte), actresses, writers, critics and, with the new shorter work week a result of the
industrial revolution - seamstresses and shop girls. This diverse group embodied a new, modern Parisian
society that accepted, as it continued to develop and advanced the French Revolution's promise of liberte,
egalite, fraternite.
With
a masterful use of gesture and expression, Renoir portrays youthful, idealized portraits of his friends
and colleagues who frequented the Maison Fournaise. The group included artists, writers, actresses, critics
and a young woman affectionately cooing at her dog, who is Aline Charigot, the young seamstress Renoir
had recently met and would later marry.
The Process Behind the Painting
For most viewers and admirers of Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party,the artist's process appears at
first glance to be one of spontaneity and freshness. Consistent with the image of Impressionism as art of
direct observation, this work captures the fleeting effects of light and color. Renoir was so successful in
bringing together a large group of figures into a singular, believable image of a charmed moment in time
that it requires careful visual examination of the painting's composition to fully understand his artistic
achievement. Detailed observation of the paint surface reveals the high level of skill in the techniques of oil
painting that Renoir had developed by this point in his career. The character of his brushwork varies from
brightly colored, thickly applied paint in the still life on the table, to the feathered brushstrokes of the
landscape in the background. In the figures, Renoir has used firm outlines and subtle gradations oflight and
dark to clearly define the three-dimensional character of the human body, and the specific details of the
facial features.
Recent technical studies have shown that Renoir made numerous changes to the canvas as he worked on the
painting for a period of months. He made changes that range from fine adjustments to the positioning of
individual figures to a major addition such as the red and white awning in the upper left. It can be detected
by the naked eye, in the pentimento around the hat of the bearded man under the awning at the left. The
importance of this change can be understood when the viewer attempts to envision the painting without the
awning. If an open sky and distant landscape had been retained, the three-dimensional illusion would have
been difficult to achieve. By enclosing the top edge, the balcony's recession into space is more convincing
and the sitters are better defined as a cohesive group.
Renoir masterfully crealed, Luncheon of the Boating Party 's mood of enchantment by both the immediacy
and specificify of a contemporary moment nineteenth-century leisure on the Seine and the universal appeal
of human celebration. Moreover, he, in this canvas combined several of the traditional categories of
painting: still life, landscape, portraiture, and genre. The result is a timeless painting that captures the
atmosphere of an idyllic place where friends share the pleasures of food, wine, and conversation.
Luncheon of the Boating Party is part of the Phillips collection in washington D.c.
Vocabularv
Composition: The artist's organization of the visual elements and the lines, colors and shapes
in a work of art.
"En plein
oir":
-
To paint outdoors.
Genre: Subject category in art of scenes of everyday life; any of the traditional categories of
painting including: historical, mythological or religious subjects, portraiture, still life, landscape,
and scenes ofevery day life.
Guinguettes: cafe; usually an open-air, suburban restaurant; sometimes with music and dancing.
Impressionism: 1. a painting style developed by French artists in the 1870's characterized by
quickly applied brushstrokes and patches of bright color that blend when viewed from a distance
to convey atmosphere and the fleeting effects of light; 2. the innovative artistic movement of the
1870's and 80's led by a group of artists who painted scenes of modern life with the movement
are: Mary Cassatt, Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille
Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley.
Liberte, egalite,fraternite: trans. "libert5r, equality, and brotherhood"; late eighteenth century
motto that reflected the goals of the French Revolution.
Pentimento: evidence of a change made by an artist in a painting that appears over time.
ThePeoolePortraved in Luncheon of the Boatins Partv
Man in top hat
- Charles Ephrussi, a wealthy amateur art historian, collector and editor of
The Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Talking to Charles is Jules Laforgue in a casual coat and cap, a
poet, critic and personal secretary to Ephrussi. In the center, actress Ellen Andree drinks from a
glass while across from her in a brown bowler hat and back to viewers is Baron Raoul Barbier,
a bon vivant and former mayor of colonial Saigon. He's facing the smiling woman leaning on the
railing thought to be Alphonsine Fournaise the daughter of the proprietor. Wearing traditional
straw boater's hats, both she and her brother, Alphonse Fournaise Jr., who was responsible for
the boat rentals and stands at the far left of the composition, are placed within, but are at the edge
of the party. [n the upper right hand corner sporting boater's hats are the artist Paul Lhote in light
hat and the bureaucrat Eugene Lestringez is in the darker hat, who often modeled for Renoir's
paintings and seem to be flirting with the fashionably dressed, famous actress Jeanne Samary,
her gloves touch her hat. Seated in the foreground in a boater's hat is Renoir's close friend and
fellow artist, Gustave Caillebotte who sits backwards in his chair next to actress Angele and
standing above them is Italian journalist Maggiolo. Caillebotte gazes across a young woman
affectionately cooing at her dog, who is Aline Charigot, the young seamstress Renoir recently
met and would later marrv.
(t
{-u,o'
Dialogue Suggestions:
What is happening in this painting? People are enjoying a pleasant afternoon, talking
and eating a nice meal. They are at an outdoor caf6 which were called Guingettes.
Sometimes Guingettes had music and dancing.
Are the people happy or sad? They are happy. Renoir liked to paint cheerful pictures
that would make the viewer feel good.
What was life like when this picture was painted in 1880-81? There were no tv's.
computers, cell phones, game-boys, etc. The railroad was a very important form of
transportation.
Is this a small painting or a large one? It is a large canvas, it is over 4 ft.by 5 ft. (51 X
68 inches).
Where is the foreground of this painting and who or what is in it? The foreground is
in the front. The people are more prominent here. The man leaning on the balcony, the
lady seated in the white hat talking to two men and Aline, the lady with the little dog who
Renoir later married. Their Lunch is in the foreground too,
Where is the background? What's going on in it? The background makes up the back
of the painting, behind the foreground. A man in a top hat talks to another man. A lady
adjusts her hat as two men talk to her.
There are different types of paintings. Landscape, still life and portrait. What kind
of painting is this? It is a combination of all three.
Can anyone describe a landscape painting. How is this painting a landscape? A
landscape is a painting of nature, of the outdoors. This scene takes place outdoors. There
is a lake and trees and flowers in the background.
What is a still life and what part of this picture is a still life? A still life is something
that does not move like a bouquet of flowers in a vase or a bowl of fruit. The food and
bottles on the table make up the still life part of this painting.
And, what is a portrait? How is this painting one? This is
painting of many people.
a
multiple portrait, a
What style is this picture painted in? Impressionist. Artists use quick brushstrokes to
capture the scene of the moment with lots of color and light.
Did Renoir use lots of color in this painting? Yes, Renoir used lots of bright colors. He
also added black which he liked to use very much. Notice the men's hats in
background.
t-he
How about light? Look at the reflections on the bottles and notice the light on the faces,
especially the woman's face in the blue dress and white hat. Light reflects off the
men,s
white shirts and tablecloth too.
What kind of brushstrokes did Renoir use in this painting? He used different types.
He used brightly colored, thickly applied paint in the still life part of the painting
and he
used lightweight, feathered brushstrokes for the background landscape. He gave
the
figures a three dimensional feeling by outlining the models and using gradaions/shades
of light and dark. This also gave detail to their faces.
There are fourteen portraits of people and one of a dog in this painting. Are they
posed in a formal fashion, like they are waiting for someone to paint
their picture?
No. They are affanged in informal, natural looking groups that make up the wfrfte
picture. Take a look and see if you can find different groupings. The man
standing
over the lady with the white hat and the man siuing back*ards in-tris chair are posed
together. The man in a top hat talks to the man in the cap. The lady takes a drink
sitting
with the man behind the man standing. The two men with the lady fixing her hat make
a
group. The lady seated playing with her dog is posed with the man leaning
on the balcony
railing. The girl leaning on the balcony talks wilh the man in the brown hit and suit.
Where do you think Renoir painted this picture? Inside or outside? He painted some
of it outside on the balcony at the cat6. When artists paint outside this is called ,.en plein
air". Renoir also worked on this painting in his studio indoors.
Would you like to step into this painting? What would
happy moment in time.
it be like? Fun, cheerful,
a