O Bote (La Yole)

By the 1870s the railway had put the river towns west of Paris within an easy day trip, and Chatou, about ten miles out, filled up on Sundays with city people rowing and picnicking. Renoir painted this bright river scene there around 1875, in the thick of Impressionism. He set an orange boat against deep blue water, opposite colours that make each other burn brighter, and built the whole thing from vivid paint used straight from the tube, with no black anywhere. In the background, almost easy to miss, sit a sailing boat, a riverside villa and a railway bridge, the very line that had carried these boaters out from the city. The two women in the skiff are simply enjoying an afternoon.