Luncheon of the Boating Party Luncheon of the Boating Party Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881; ) is a painting by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Included in the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition in 1882, it was identified as the best painting in the show by three critics. It was purchased from the artist by the dealer-patron Paul Durand-Ruel and bought in 1923 (for $125,000) from his son by industrialist Duncan Phillips, who spent a decade in pursuit of the work. It is now in The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. It shows a richness of form, a fluidity of brush stroke, and a flickering light. The
The Boating Party in gardens. It is also one of her largest oil paintings. In 1890 Cassatt visited the great Japanese Print exhibition at the ecole de Beaux-arts in Paris. Mary Cassatt owned Japanese prints by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806). The exhibition at Durand-Ruel of Japanese art proved the most important influence on Cassatt. Frederick A. Sweet suggests that Cassatt may have been inspired by Édouard Manet's "Boating" from 1874."Boating" was exhibited at the (fourth?) Impressionist Exhibition of 1879, where it was not well received. Cassatt however, convinced her friend Louisine Havemeyer to buy it. Much of the work from the Havemeyer collection was