La colazione (Le Déjeuner)

Renoir painted this in the summer of 1875 at Chatou, a riverside spot just west of Paris that the new railway had turned into a weekend playground for city people. The straw boater hanging on the chair says the couple are taking a pause from a boat on the Seine. He worked it up alongside another lunch scene now in Chicago, using what looks like the same man and woman at the same restaurant, the Fournaise, a haunt of rowers and painters. It is small and loose, the reds of the wine and the bread picking up the warmth of skin against the blue of his jacket. Six years on, at that very restaurant, Renoir would gather a whole crowd for his large Luncheon of the Boating Party.