Among Marshall’s Ten Wonders of the World: Renoir’s The Luncheon of the Boating Party

First published Apr. 1, 2023

I consider myself a romantic. In that vein, some years ago I decided to make a list of my 10 wonders of the world. Some such lists are of the natural wonders of the world, such as the Grand Canyon and Victoria Falls and others are composed of man-made edifices, like the Great Pyramid (actually three of them) at Giza and the Taj Mahal in Agra. Unlike those lists, mine is more focused on human achievement. I will not list each of my ten, arbitrary, choices. The first and top of the list of wonders is “requited love” as an homage to my approaching the 65th anniversary of my marriage to my life’s companion, Alice Jo.

Among my ten wonders is Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s 1881 oil on canvas, Le Déjouner des Canotiers (Luncheon of the Boating Party), which resides in the Phillips Collection, a small art museum just off DuPont Circle in Washington, DC. The painting is among Renoir’s largest, five and one-half feet wide and slightly over four feet tall. It rivals in size, but not in its story, Renoir’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette in the Musée d’Orsay. The Luncheon of the Boating Party hangs alone on an interior wall in the Phillip’s Collection before which is a small bench for viewing.

Figure 1. Le Déjouner des Canotiers (Luncheon of the boating party)

I had to travel to Washington, D.C. with some regularity. I had an impactful annual meeting of three medical research societies of which I was a member and at which our laboratory, periodically, presented our research. As a Governor of the American Red Cross, the Board meetings were in Washington several times a year. I, also, served as the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Holland Research Laboratory of the American Red Cross, which met in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington. Travel to Bethesda, through Washington, was required, also, the years I served as a consultant to the National Institutes of Health extramural grants review program, which selected biomedical research grant applications for funding at universities, medical centers and research institutes throughout the country. On any occasion that I travelled to Washington, I tried to reserve time to visit the Phillips Collection. During that visit, I would sit on the small stool and be rapt by the wonders of that Renoir painting.  Among other attributes, it epitomized the brush strokes of impressionism. If, it was out on tour at the time of my visit, profound disappointment!

Figure 2. The location of the painting and the bench in the Phillips Collection.

Of course, one cannot, realistically, choose one Impressionist painting and say it is the best. So many works of that school of artists are captivating. This canvass by Renoir is, however, singular. The painting is large and complex since it combines landscape, still life (nature morte) and fourteen human figures and a dog, a remarkable diversity of genre, but seamlessly integrated into its magnificent whole. It was first exhibited at the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition in 1882 and three critics felt it the best painting in the exhibition.

My choice is more symbolic of the Impressionist school and of their greatest works. In addition, it was accessible to me and not in a distant museum in Paris or Amsterdam. In the same way, another wonder on my list, Pavarotti’s tenor voice, is in part symbolic. In this case, the choice gets closer to the singular wonder because of his voice’s extraordinary sound, but in another sense the wonder represents the great tenor voices of opera.

On the many visits to the Phillips Collection, I did wonder who the people at the “Luncheon Party” were, but it was not a compelling thought. Not compelling until I read the Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal. The book is a biography of the Ephrussi family, successful and wealthy Jewish grain merchants in Odessa Russia who, later, further expanded their business into oil and, then, banking. Their business and financial success lead members of the family to move to Vienna and Paris. Charles Ephrussi chose his own path and had moved to Paris to pursue the arts, including an interest in and support of a new movement in painting, “Impressionism”. There he acquired a collection of 264 netsuke, very small, Japanese, carved figures of animals, people and a variety of other random figures carved of ivory or wood. They easily fit into the clenched hand. Charles Ephrussi was a wealthy collector, art historian and editor of the Gazette Des Beaux Arts and an early enthusiast of late 19th century japonisme. He had acquired and amassed the 264 netsuke pieces.  He, later, gave them to his cousin, Viktor, in Vienna as a wedding gift. The Nazi’s effort to exterminate the Jews led to the loss of the Ephrussi family’s magnificent home, the Palais Ephrussi, on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, and their extraordinary art collection and other valuables, and, nearly, their singular array of netsuke. A household employee hid the collection in a straw mattress and it escaped Nazi confiscation. The collection was returned to the surviving descendent of the family after the war. A member of the fifth generation of the family has written, The Hare with the Amber Eyes, a biography of the Ephrussi family and, if you will, the netsuke collection.

Figure 3. The netsuke the hare with amber eyes.

Charles Ephrussi was a contemporary and friend of Renoir and was one of the person’s attending the Luncheon depicted in Renoir’s painting, which was on the porch of the Maison Fournaise in Chatou, France on the Seine River. The painting includes several of Renoir’s friends. On the railing at the left are the son and daughter of the proprietor Fournaise, owner of the restaurant. In the foreground, Renoir’s future wife, Aline Chirigot, is fondling an affenpinscher. She and Renoir were married in 1890 and had three children. Charles Ephrussi is in the top hat with his back to the viewer talking to his personal secretary, a poet and literary critic. Thirteen of the fourteen in the painting have been identified and include Renoir’s circle of friends and acquaintances. Among them are two actresses, an artist, a journalist and a government administrator. In a brown hat with his back to the viewer in the center of the canvass is Baron Raoul Barbier, the former mayor of colonial Saigon in French Indo-China. He sits across from the actress Angèle Legault, who is sipping from her glass. This scene was constructed by Renoir in that several of the persons painted were not actually at this site at the time. For example, Renoir’s future wife’s image was inserted. She was not at the Maison Fournaise at the time. If one looks carefully, one can see sail boats on the Seine just under the awnings edge.  

The painting ranks among my list of wonders. Any segment of the painting would stand alone as a magnificent canvass. In its entirety, for me, it is Renoir’s most intimate, yet complex, and compelling work.  

January 2022