Le Déjeuner des canotiers

Renoir painted this over 1880 and 1881 on the terrace of a real restaurant, the Maison Fournaise at Chatou, just outside Paris where the railway had made the riverbank an easy Sunday escape. He filled it with actual friends. Fellow painters, a critic, an actress, the owner's son and daughter, all lingering over the wine and the leftovers of lunch. Down in the front left, cooing at a little dog, sits Aline Charigot, a young seamstress. Renoir was falling for her while he worked, and he scraped out the face of the woman he had first painted there so he could put Aline in her place. Nine years later he married her. It is one of the last big group scenes he made in the pure Impressionist manner, every straw hat and glass and striped awning shimmering in the warm afternoon light before his style turned firmer and more classical.