Luncheon of the Boating Party painting, combining figures, still-life, and landscape in one work, depicts a group of Renoir's friends relaxing on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise restaurant along the Seine river in Chatou, France. The painter and art patron, Gustave Caillebotte, is seated in the lower right. Renoir's future wife, Aline Charigot, is in the foreground playing with a small dog, an affenpinscher; she replaced an earlier woman who sat for the painting but with whom Renoir became annoyed. On the table is fruit and wine. The diagonal of the railing serves to demarcate the two halves of the composition, one densely packed
Luncheon in the Studio saying to us: Look at me!... Thus, no expression, no feeling, no composition." He spoke of "types without character, scenes devoid of all interest" and said disparagingly (yet insightfully from the point of view of modern criticism) that "Manet had made the portrait of a "Balcony" and a "Luncheon"". Meyers finds the depiction of Leenhoff similar in some respects to an 1855 portrait by Edgar Degas of his brother, "Achille De Gas in the Uniform of a Cadet". They share the leaning pose, the presence of swords, and facial characteristics. He further suggests that, by borrowing from the Degas work,