Impressionism: Jos Tam talks on Pierre-Auguste Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881.

Artist : Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Date of Creation :1881 

Style : Impressionism

Medium : Oil on canvas

Dimensions : 132.20 x 175.60 cm

Analysis of this artwork

Draft Essay

Luncheon of the Boating Party

This painting looks sharply bright, fresh and lively. It is different from the styles of academism and classicism. The styles of academism and classicism are serious, rigid or even dull whereas the styles of impressionism are vivid, active and relaxing.  

Although Renoir was poor, his paintings are mostly clear, beautiful with a warm tone. Especially his techniques of applying optical theories from physics and stippling, a new skill created by impressionists, seem to make the picture look hazy and bright. The picture lets audience feel fantastic and comfortable. The female portraits especially reflect his painting techniques.

Composition

The arrangement of Luncheon of the Boating Party shows a new Impressionist movement which the characters are no longer aristocrats or religious figures but are bourgeois or citizens. The bourgeois or citizens became more powerful and had more money after The Industrial Revolution and French Revolution. They were able to buy some expensive paintings so it was why Renoir depicted the daily life of residents.  

Renoir carefully and skillfully uses space, color, shape, and texture to paint the scene he saw. The bottles, table wares, food and figures are the shapes to the canvas and the people overlap that gives a sense of space and perspective.

Renoir also makes his composition neater and tighter by using design methods such as harmony, repetition and balance.

Audience can realize a series of movement through the facial expression and actions and of the characters.

Repetition is indicated through the stripes on the background representing some plants, the pattern of the gazebo cover, the yellow or black hats and posts in the railing which attract people’s eyes to stay around the canvas.

The artist thickly applies brushstrokes but there are also some delicate ones so the picture can be more sophisticated, and speckles of crossed red and white make the painting splendid and superb. For impressionists, they started revealing their brushstrokes deliberately, their paintings were not like the classicism oil paintings which not likely showing the brushstrokes. It is because showing their brushstrokes meant showing the artist’s personal characteristics and styles.  

With regard to balance, Renoir is an intelligent painter. He succeeds in distributing two figures on the left while twelve on the right. The tilting floorboards allows the characters on the upper-right corner to be easily noticeable and this enhanced the feeling of informality and intimacy.

There is no evidence proved that Renoir prepared any draft drawings for Luncheon of the Boating Party or that he did any initial sketches on the canvas. A common Impressionist approach was that they directly developed the composition and painted on the canvas.

It is believed that Renoir collected most of his ideas at the Maison Fournaise early on to organize this arrangement. He made a lot of changes in composition when painting this masterpiece. One of the most significant example is that the striped awning which aims at further enforcing the feeling of intimacy was added. Additionally, the trees emphasizes the cozy atmosphere so everyone just enjoys the party.

Coloring and Lighting

Impressionist painters were opposed to classical and academic painting, and also Romanticism which wilted and decayed gradually. They were inspired by Realism promoted by Corot, Courbet and Barbizon School. They also adopted other countries such as Japan, China painting techniques as well as applying modern science, especially optics that light produce all colors. So they were based on the spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) to mix colors. Owing to the changing of light, they thought they should capture momentary light shine for revealing the nature. Therefore the painters advocated to go outside and paint the nature in different period of the day. The painters like scientists would directly observe the subtle changes in color by their own eyes and paint according to their sense of the scene.

The colors used by Renoir are very wide and he contrasts the Prussian blue and green with Cadmium orange and vermillion. There are some typical example, when viewer looks at the blue clothes, the darker side of the blue clothes was made by the mixture and blue and orange. Renoir gave up black and tried to contrast colors to paint the dark side. This skill can make the picture be brighter and sharper, not like those gloom painting in classicism. This painting applying lots of colors reflects both the Impressionism and time period. Texture is performed by the figures as viewers could easily discover the brushstrokes of coloring. Renoir’s palette also has many golden tones and the skin of women shows red from the sun light. The hats and arms are also further clues of a sunny day. Skills of layering and blending to represent glowing skin with subtle tints of green and blue which make some part of skin be darker.

There is a great arrangement of light throughout Luncheon of the Boating Party. The prime light source is the balcony and the table, vests, cloth and of the two men in the leading-edge reflected the beaming sunlight. This painting captures the temporary effects of changing light and color. For handling shadowing, an Impressionist paintings deny black like traditional painting but use contrasts of color to shadow instead. Therefore, the picture can have brightness

Mood, Tone and Emotion

In conventional Impressionist style Renoir illustrated a scene from modern daily life and based it in the Restaurant Fournaise a place he knew well .Chatou was one of Renoir's favorite place to drae and Luncheon of the Boating Party is a portrait of his friends having a Sunday afternoon lunch on the balcony of the restaurant. His purpose was to take a usual scene and create a middle class party that portrayed the teenagers and beauty of his peers.

Discuss questions :

1.Does this painting reflect the lives of citizens?

2.What are the statuses or

 careers of the characters in this painting?

References :

Teacher's Guide for Luncheon of the Boating Party  by Susan Vreeland

http://www.svreeland.com/lbp-teacher-guide.html

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Luncheon of the Boating Party by Creating with Wisdom

http://creatingwithwisdom.blogspot.hk/2011/10/pierre-auguste-renoir-luncheon-of.html