Partie de bateau

You are sitting in the boat. Across from you a man in a black top hat pulls hard on the oars, the river shimmering behind him. Caillebotte's Boating Party puts the viewer right inside the stroke.

The story behind the painting

Caillebotte painted Boating Party, also called Oarsman in a Top Hat, in 1878, during a period when water filled his work. He loved rowing, owned 32 boats, and his family had a summer home near the Yerres River, which he had enjoyed since the age of twelve. Rowing was then a novel leisure for the urban upper class, and Monet, Renoir and Manet had already painted boating scenes in the 1870s. Caillebotte, unusual among the leading Impressionists for focusing on men and their everyday activities, set out to make his rowing picture different from theirs.

What to look for

The canvas, 89.5 by 116.7 cm, shows an oarsman on the Yerres, elegantly dressed, wearing a black top hat, his jacket folded beside him. The close-up action view is unusual for a large painting. Monet and Renoir had placed rowers within broad landscapes, and Manet showed moments before and after rowing; here the viewer seems to be a passenger in the boat. Christophe Leribault of the Musée d'Orsay spoke of an almost cinematic close-up of physical effort. Watch the shimmering water and the natural light playing on it. The model is unknown; some suggest the painter Norbert Goeneutte, who had posed for Renoir.

Meaning and intent

Critics have judged its perspective superior to Manet's in Boating of 1874, giving the picture a more realist feel and drawing the viewer in. Leribault noted that Caillebotte drew on his own experience of boating. The man's formal top hat in the middle of strenuous exercise captures a moment when city gentlemen were taking up the river as a new pastime. Caillebotte's family wealth let him paint freely without needing to sell, and to support his artist friends, so he could follow such personal subjects as far as he liked.

Legacy

Caillebotte showed the work at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in 1879, among 35 of his paintings and pastels, and it was considered one of the best. It stayed with him until his death, then passed in 1894 to his brother Martial and to Martial's descendants, remaining in the family for 128 years. In January 2020 France declared it a national treasure. With a donation from LVMH, the Musée d'Orsay acquired it in 2022 and unveiled it in 2023. It filled a gap, as the museum's earlier Caillebotte holdings had no painting from this water period.