The Luncheon of The Boating

The Luncheon of the Boating Party

        Pierre Auguste Renoir, one the most important Impressionist painters, painted The Luncheon of the Boating Party during the summer of 1881

        The restaurant Fournaise, which you can see in the picture, is in Chatou, to the west of Paris on the  River Seine. In the 1880s. Parisians Started to have more time to enjoy themselves. If they wanted to get out of the dirty, noisy capital at the weekends, the new railway could take them to places along the river where they could relax, eat, sail, swim, and dance.

        The people in this painting were all Renoir's friends. The young woman on the left with the dog was Renoir's gilrfriend. Aline Charigot. They got married a year after Renoir finished the painting, and they had a very happy life together. Behind her is Alphonise. Opposite Aline, wearing a hat and sitting on chair, is Gustave Caillebotte, an artist an close friend of Renoir. Also in the group with Caillebotte is the actress, Angèle, and the Italian jornalist, Maggiolo. Two more actress are in the painting: on in the centre, drinking from a glass, an the other on the right. The man in the black top hat, Charles Ephrussi, was a rich banker and art collector, and the man he is talking to in the brown jacket, was probably the poet Jules Laforgue.

        Today it is in the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., and many people think it is one of the greatest painting in the world.

(fonte: Natural English, p. 96)

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