Description
Luncheon of the Boating Party – a balcony on the Seine full of the painter’s acquaintances
| Year of creation: | 1881 |
| Original size: | 172 cm x 129 cm |
| Painting style: | Impressionism |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located: | Phillips Collection, Washington DC |
Luncheon of the Boating Party is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1881. The original measures 172 cm x 129 cm and is held in Duncan Phillips’s collection in Washington. Our oil painting Luncheon of the Boating Party is painted by hand in oils on canvas, in eight landscape sizes from 80 x 60 to 200 x 150 cm, among them the size of the original, 172 x 129 cm.
Aline Charigot and the small dog in the foreground
The painter put his own friends on the canvas, enjoying themselves on the balcony of the Maison Fournaise on the Seine. In the foreground is Renoir’s later wife Aline Charigot, shown playing with a small dog. The scene is therefore neither a commission nor a set-up with models, but a company the painter knew by name.
Why hand-painted, not a print
Our version is not a print. There are many faces, hands and glasses at small scale on this canvas, and they are the first things to break down in print – the screen fuses them into one common surface, and a face in the second row loses its expression. A hand-painted canvas paints each of them separately, so the people at the table stay distinct even when you look at the picture from close to.
In the room
The scene is landscape, wide and full, so it needs distance and free wall around it: above a long sofa, in a dining room above the table, or on the main wall of a living room. At a small size the company at the table closes up into a crowd, so we do not recommend this subject below 100 x 75 cm. For an ordinary living room we recommend 130 x 100 cm, and for a large wall 172 x 129 cm, which is also the size of the original.
What you receive
We paint the canvas to order, by hand and for you alone, so every copy is made on its own; the canvas is usually painted and dried within three to four weeks. If you prefer, we will paint it in a size that is not on the list. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval, and only then does the painting go out. Luncheon of the Boating Party arrives stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, wrapped in protective film and in rigid packaging, with no further stretching or finishing needed.
- Subject: a company on a balcony by the river, with a small dog in the foreground, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
- Sizes: 8 sizes, from 80 x 60 cm to 200 x 150 cm, another size on request
- Detail worth knowing: the canvas was bought in 1923 by Duncan Phillips, and the painter’s later wife Aline Charigot stands in the foreground
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