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"le joie de vivre"

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Renoir’s favorite subject was the human figure right from the start of his career. He loved to paint both individuals and groups in moments of leisure or while immersed in nature. He used an innovative style, painting bright and luminous colors with swift brushstrokes.

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Now in the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, the painting, an oil on canvas painted in 1881, celebrates the lightness of good company, of human enjoying their lives well eating, drinking and talking together, and the beauty of nature.

It’s a hymn to the untroubled and serene summer leisure.

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Both the activity and the image are products of bourgeois society, designed to distract viewers and participants from the mundane realities of life in this new world.

Luncheon of the Boating Party is a romanticized portrait of his friends enjoying a Sunday afternoon on the balcony of the restaurant.

It is a scene of the triumphant bourgeoisie celebrating in a place that was once a playground of the aristocracy.

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Many of the people depicted are Renoir’s nearest and dearest friends:

At the lower right-hand corner the young man is fellow Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte.

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The woman pictured drinking in the middle is Ellen Andrée, an accomplished actress who was also the model of Degas’s Absinthe Drinker.

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The woman on the left, with the flowered bonnet and puppy, is Aline Charigot, Renoir’s then-girlfriend and future wife

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The setting is a restaurant on an island in the Seine at Chatou, the heart of Impressionist leisure-land.

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Despite its apparent spontaneity, that reminds us of a picture, the painting was very carefully put together, almost certainly in Renoir's studio.

On the foreground a still life is the symbol of the bourgeois: we can see the remains of a freshly eaten lunch: there is fruit, a multitude of wine and glasses.

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Renoir makes his composition more effective by adopting balance, repetition and harmony.

A sense of movement is realized through the actions and expression of the cast and repetition is achieved through the curves of the gazebo cover, the stripes, the posts in the railing and the yellow straw hats which guide the viewers eye around the canvas.

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The painting is a continuous comparison between cold and warm colors, dark colors and light colors, primary and complementary colors, in order to create strong contrasts and to give to the figures their own volume

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There is no room for darkness in Renoir's paintings.

The main light source is the opening in the balcony and the beaming sunlight is reflected by the table cloth and the vests of the two men in the foreground. This canvas captures the momentary effects of changing light and color.