Luncheon of the Boating Party

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Le déjeuner des canotiers

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1880–1881

oil on canvas

129.5 × 172.7 cm

Phillips Collection

Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881, French: Le déjeuner des canotiers) is a painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It is currently housed in the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

The painting depicts a group of Renoir's friends relaxing on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise along the Seine river in Chatou, France. The painter and art patron, Gustave Caillebotte, is seated in the lower right. Renoir's future wife, Aline Charigot, is in the foreground playing with a small dog. In this painting Renoir has captured a great deal of light. As you can see the main focus of light is coming from the large opening in the balcony, beside the large singleted man in the hat. The singlets of both men in the foreground and the table-cloth both work together to reflect this light and send it through the whole composition.

It was featured prominently in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001).

A homage to this painting appears in the final panel of On the False Earths, the seventh volume of Jean-Claude Mézières and Pierre Christin's long-running comic book series Valérian: Spatio-Temporal Agent. [1]