Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party and Baron Barbier

I read a fact the other day – a rather obscure one and pretty unusable anywhere perhaps but this blog…and even then I’m pushing it. Renoir’s famous painting Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881) is extremely well known – a delightful looking summer lunch party along the Seine. It now resides in the Phillip’s Collection in Washington DC, a charming small museum up near Dupont Circle. I fear the gigantism of the Smithsonian rather overwhelms the city’s other more interesting institutions such as the Phillip’s.

Anyway, here’s the obscure China Rhyming factoid about Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party – the chap seated with his back to the painter but wearing a brown bowler hat is Baron Raoul Barbier, Renoir’s friend, all round bon-vivant (horse racing, champagne parties, beautiful women, had been a dashing cavalry officer) and a former Mayor of Saigon who had just returned from French Indo-China.

Well it interested me…

Thanks to Edmund de Waal’s beautifully written The Hare with Amber Eyes for that factoid.