Renoir and Friends: Luncheon of the Boating Party

Renoir and Friends: Luncheon of the Boating Party will focus on The Phillips Collection’s celebrated Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-1881) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the diverse circle of friends who inspired it. 

The first exhibition to focus on this singular masterwork in more than 20 years, it is comprised of over 40 carefully chosen works—paintings, drawings, pastels, watercolors, and photographs from public and private collections around the world—that reveal the story of Luncheon of the Boating Party and the artists and patrons who were instrumental in its creator’s success. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters explores the life and challenges of this brilliant artist. During the seventy-eight years of his life, Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted thousands of paintings and made uncounted drawings, watercolors, and sketches. Behind this prodigious output, rivaling even Picasso’s, is a lifetime of struggle and anguish seldom hinted at in the work of this “happy painter.” His efforts to find a new art to match his vision of the world created by light and warmth are vividly and intimately chronicled here through his letters and those of his friends and patrons. 

Barbara Ehrlich White, a renowned Renoir scholar, devoted more than twenty years to searching out unpublished letters and documents that reveal his life as an artist and as a man. First published in 1984, her book was praised for its comprehensive yet intimate history of Renoir's life and work. Now back in print, White's classic book brilliantly contrasts the story of Renoir's personal battle against crippling arthritis––as well as his loss of favor with old patrons dissatisfied when he developed a new style––with the joyous gratification of the senses that flows from his canvases. She captures both the underlying traditionalism of his training and his audacious breakthrough in style, subject, and technique.

This uniquely documented tribute to Renoir, with its lavish illustrations, including three gatefolds­­, is the essential Renoir.

Select Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters to place this book in your Amazon shopping cart.