Thursday, January 29, 2009

Who's Who in Renoir's The Luncheon of the Boating Party


First, here's a link to Renoir's The Luncheon of the Boating Party on the website of the Phillips Collection which I featured in my post on Tuesday. http://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/boating/index.aspx


Second, on Tuesday I mentioned that art history people know the identity of all the people pictured in Renoir's The Luncheon of the Boating Party. Here's a link to the info. http://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/boating/whoswho.aspx Also, I'm including the diagram here, and the text below.
"The Luncheon of the Boating Party includes youthful, idealized portraits of Renoir's friends and colleagues as they relax at the Maison Fournaise restaurant. Wearing a top hat, the amateur art historian, collector, and editor Charles Ephrussi (8) speaks with a younger man in a more casual brown coat and cap. He may be Ephrussi's personal secretary, Jules Laforgue (5), a poet and critic.

At center, the actress Ellen Andrée (6) drinks from a glass. Across from her in a brown bowler hat is Baron Raoul Barbier (4), a bon vivant and former mayor of colonial Saigon. He is turned toward the smiling woman at the railing, thought to be Alphonsine Fournaise (3), the proprietor's daughter. She and her brother, Alphonse Fournaise, Jr. (2), who handled the boat rentals, wear straw boaters'. They are placed within, but at the edge of, the party. At the upper right, the artist Paul Lhote (12) and the bureaucrat Eugène Pierre Lestringuez (11) seem to be flirting with actress Jeanne Samary (13).
In the foreground, Renoir included a youthful portrait of his fellow artist, close friend, and wealthy patron, Gustave Caillebotte (9), who sits backwards in his chair and is grouped with the actress Angèle (7) and the Italian journalist Maggiolo (10). Caillebotte, an avid boatman and sailor, wears a white boater's shirt and flat-topped boater's. He gazes at a young woman cooing at her dog. She is Aline Charigot (1), a seamstress Renoir had recently met and would later marry. "
You can view some of my shaped 3-D paintings on my website at www.jayrolfe.com/.

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