Domesticity and Mobility

Renoir: The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881. The Phillips Collection, Washington

This painting is a depiction of the leisure society that Paris was at this time and possibly of the impressionists way of life. The setting is of course outdoors, and shows a group of people enjoying nature and each other at a guinguette, on the banks of the Seine. The vivid colors and context of the painting captures all of the pleasures that the outdoors can possess. The man straddling the chair on the right is Gustave Caillebotte, another artist in the impressionist circle. The position that Caillebotte is in and the way that he looks to the viewer makes him seem like a boy, and not the thirty-three year old man he was in 1881. The man at the left leaning against the rail appears to be a young Claude Monet the way he looked in 1875, six years before this painting was finished. Renoir put a lot of emphasis on youth in this painting, but this is not surprising, because it also featured another young subject. The woman in the straw hat holding a puppy is Aline Charigot, Renoir's future wife. She herself was a lot younger than Renoir, so the age she appears to be may actually be the age she was.

One reason why he put everyone in the painting younger than they were in reality might be because he did not want his other subjects to appear that much older compared to Charigot. Another reason is because he wanted to recapture a point in time in when "the youthfulness of spirit and fellow-feeling which prevailed amongst the artists would return."7 Thus this painting has a sort of nostalgic undertone which yearns for the "good old" days that he and others in the impressionist circle had not too long ago.

The woman leaning on the rail holding her head appears to be Renoir's favorite model of the 1870's (who had died in 1879) by her type of face and clothing that she is wearing. It looks as if she is posing for someone in this piece, because her gaze is on the man whose face we cannot see with the brown suit on and a matching hat. She is an object, the subject to this man in the brown suit's gaze. Therefore, she is not in an active role in this picture just as women were supposed to be in society.

The point of focus that these women have is important in this picture. All of the women seem to be focusing on some man, with the exception of Aline Charigot. While all the women are focused on men, all the men are not focused on women. The Monet look-alike seems to be staring off into space, or looking at nature. Either way, he is not focused on any one particular person which makes him more independent than the women who seem to all be staring at some living thing yearningly.

Detail, Renoir: The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881. The Phillips Collection, Washington

Aline Charigot is the only one who is not staring at a man, she is staring at a dog. This is logical because she was his future wife, and Renoir would not have her staring at some other man longingly even if it was just in a painting. Dogs do symbolize fidelity, a trait that was considered extremely important for a woman to have. They also symbolize domesticity which is fitting, because she would later take part of his domestic life by marrying him.

All of the women seem to be dependent on someone or something. The one woman who is not staring at something at a man or a dog is the woman with the glass in her hand. (One can only assume that she is drinking some alcoholic beverage because that is the only type of drink visible in this picture.) The implication this painting gives is that women can not be independent. This method of thinking is not something that Renoir thought of in his head, it was the way the logic behind the structure of society. This structure being female inferiority and male superiority.

However, the presence of these women at a place like this demonstrates the type of mobility in modern Paris. Middle-class women were not bound to the house, instead they had the freedom to spend their free time in leisure with other people (including men). Parisian modern society was what allowed for there to be an activity of leisure where all were welcome to take part in. But this painting shows the roles that women had in this activity were not completely boundless. This was the way that Renoir saw the cafe and the rest of modern society, idealistically. He wanted to keep a male-dominated social order, and thus a male-dominated society.

Renoir, The End of the Lunch, 1879. Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.

www.spectrumvoice.com/art/19th/french/renoir/renoir66.jpg

This is another depiction of an area of Parisian leisure: a cafe. Cafes were a definitive place for modern Parisian society. It was a place where all went, regardless of class lines and social boundaries. Again, the women are both focused on a man who appears not to be paying attention to anything else except for his cigarette. The women seem to enjoy watching this man. Renoir's political conservatism is reflected in his art. This reflection can be seen not only by it's subject matter but also by the method in which he painted it:

...the figures on the edges of the composition face inwards to establish and old-fashioned pictorial balance. Renoir created in painting the loving, male-oriented relationships that he aspired to, for himself and for society. His letters and essays, and the aphorisms that his son published disclose his fears of modern industrial society with its forces for disintegration, and show his determination to express ideals of social accord by way of craftsmanship placed at the service of beauty. 8

Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism, Art, Leisure & Parisian Society, 1988

7 Mark Roskill, Van Gogh, Gaugin and the Impressionist Circle (Conneticut: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1970) p.229

8 Robert L. Herbert, Impressionism Art, Leisure, & Parisian Society (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1988)

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