Luncheon of the Boating Party
In “Luncheon of the Boating Party“, Susan Vreeland has given us a book that is a pleasure to read and a problem to review. The pleasure derives from the author’s skillful exposition of a fascinating subject, the creation of Renoir’s painting masterpiece after which the novel is named. The problem is that there is so much happening to so many people in this narrative that it is difficult for a reviewer to do justice to all of it. But I really liked this book, so it’s worth the effort.
The story is set in 1880, the year in which Pierre Auguste Renoir commenced and almost completed his larger-than-life, 14-person study of a happy group of Sunday pleasure boaters at leisure on a restaurant balcony by the Seine.
The setting is Paris and the villages around it that are watered by that beautiful, meandering river.
The characters are Renoir and his friends, an amazing array of artistic and literary talents, some of whom can be readily identified in the painting. For that matter, all but one of Renoir’s 14 models has been identified and there is consensus that the mystery person is either Guy de Maupassant or Renoir himself.
Finally, there is the occasion that sparks Renoir to paint “Luncheon of the Boating Party.” The remarkable brotherhood (and sisterhood) of French Impressionist artists - the likes of Renoir, Monet, Caillebotte, Pissaro, Sisley, Cezanne and Marisot - is breaking up. Edgar Degas has decreed that an artist who contributes work for showing at the official and dominant Salon may not also have his work appear in the separate, competing Impressionist show.
In 1880, this has the effect of excluding Renoir, Monet, Sisley and Cezanne. To make matters worse, Degas is bringing into the movement younger artists, his own disciples, of debatable ability.
Enter the extraordinary author and political/social critic, Emile Zola, who writes a review of the talentdepleted Impressionist show and pronounces the Impressionists a sloppy, self-satisfied group of “forerunners,” inferior to what they undertake. No man of genius, he said, had arisen to paint the Impressionist masterpiece.
To the present reader who has viewed the shimmering pre-1880 work of this “inferior” group, Zola’s condemnation seems absurd. But Renoir took the criticism seriously and determined to create the supreme Impressionist work that would prove Zola wrong.
Partly by design and partly by accident, he entices 14 men and women to appear in his painting but he lives in constant fear that one of them will drop out of the group. This would leave him with the unlucky number 13, inevitably conjuring up the Last Supper and guaranteeing that his painting will never be shown or sold.
Even with great effort, his models can only be brought together on Sundays, the traditional day of rest, and they must come every Sunday for six weeks because the year is passing into autumn and the artist is on the verge of losing his invaluable sunlight.
In addition to finding models, Renoir must find money. Though already successful and famous, he is perennially short of funds. He writes letters to wealthy friends, soliciting loans. He buys canvas and paints on credit. He manages to pay his models only by the grace of subsidization from others. At one point, he is so desperate that he accepts the offer of one of his models, a beautiful actress, to raise funds by means of prostitution. (She gets the money without committing the act.)
All of this comes together at La Maison Fournaise, a restaurant on the banks of the Seine at the Paris suburb, Chatou. The place is owned by Renoir’s friends, Alphonse and Louise Fournaise, and staffed in part by their son, Alphonse, and daughter, Alphonsine, both of whom appear prominently in the painting.
Every Sunday, the models gather at Maison Fournaise where Alphonse the younger arranges boat rides for them and Louise serves them marvelous meals. Even while posing for Renoir they engage in lively social and intellectual interplay with each other and with the artist. There are moments of amusement and affection and moments of friction and distress.
The artist faces, and solves, a potentially disastrous technical problem of how to make his scene appear attached to a building, rather than floating in the air. He also faces frequent threats of losing one or another of his characters. When one particularly petulant young woman withdraws in a huff, he replaces her with a young apprentice seamstress, Aline, whom he later marries.
(In my masculine view, he picked the wrong girl. As depicted in the book, Alphonsine Fourneau is so nearly the perfect woman that the male reader - or, at least, this male reader - finishes the book regretting that he will never meet her.)
Two final thoughts. First, historical fiction is tricky. There is always the risk that the fiction will overwhelm the history or vice versa. I thought this happened in Vreeland’s “The Passion of Artemisia,” which read well but omitted most of the heroine’s family.
Second, in addition to its fascinating time, place, people and events, this is a book to be read for its delightful prose. Vreeland is particularly good at dialogue. Here, for example, is Renoir speaking to his model and future wife:
“I promised your mother you would be home in an hour.”
“What did she say to that?”
“She said it was one hour too long.”
And here are two of Renoir’s models enjoying Père Fournaise’s vintage Armagnacs:
“Charles waited until everyone had enjoyed the aromas. ‘The perfect sip is always the first.’
‘”You’re wrong,’ Angele said. ‘The perfect sip is the one you’re sipping.’”
Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party” was acquired by the famed Parisian art dealer and collector, Paul Durand-Ruel, in 1882 and remained in his family until it was sold to Duncan Phillips in 1923 for the thenstaggering sum of $125,000. It now resides in the Phillips Collection in Washington, B.C. My wife and I have agreed that one of our next pleasure trips will be to pay it a visit.