Seemingly effortlessly Renoir has united in his monumental painting the compositional traditions of landscape, figurative and still life genres. I’d also say portraiture as each person has been identified but today they have become not just Renoir’s friends but ours.
They are the people we know, the friends we have lunch with. Their casual interactions and conversations can be sensed and felt. We can almost hear the sounds of the languid afternoon. Re-painting it can be like tracing the hand of the master and travelling back to his studio to see him carefully composing the formal elements. You start to see the re-workings, the faint mark of a changed hand position and extraordinary balance of colour around the space. And all those hats – so many hats!
When Duncan Phillips acquired this painting in 1923 for the Phillips Collection in Washington DC he had intended to purchase a few of Renoir’s paintings to create a suite of his work to attract tourists from all over the world. It turned out he only needed this painting. And the pilgrimages continue to this day.
In this painting I’ve added a companion dog (my little Cavalier, Gatsby) to Renoir’s future wife, Aline Chariot’s little terrier. A boat to reflect the boats in the the background and a handbag holding a scarf that picks up the colours in Renoir’s composition. The top hat reflects not only the top-hatted Charles Ephrussi, the editor of Gazette des beaux-arts at the back but also the magic of Renoir’s brilliance. The seagulls not only suggest the usual uninvited guests at a picnic but also formally connect the painting within a painting.
