Pranzo al ristorante Fournaise

In the summer of 1875 the railway had made it easy for Parisians to spend a Sunday on the Seine just west of the city, and the riverside village of Chatou filled up with rowers, day-trippers and their boats. Renoir painted this on the terrace of the Maison Fournaise there, a restaurant popular with the boating crowd. Two young oarsmen in straw hats linger over the end of a meal with a woman in blue, glasses and bottles still on the table, while out on the bright water behind them a rowing crew slides past. There is no story being told, just the loose, sunlit ease of an afternoon off. Renoir would come back to this same terrace six years later for a far larger boating party.