Ruderer in Chatou

By 1879 the railway had turned the riverbank towns west of Paris into weekend playgrounds, and Chatou, on a bend of the Seine, filled up with rowers and day-trippers. Renoir knew the spot well and put people he knew into it. The man steadying the canoe is his younger brother Edmond. The woman on the bank in the blue dress is Aline Charigot, then a young dressmaker and later his wife. The man in the white jacket is the painter Gustave Caillebotte, a friend who also collected his work. Renoir chased the flecked light on the moving water with quick, bright touches, the whole scene half suburb and half open country. He would come back to this same riverside for the Luncheon of the Boating Party two years later.