Boating

The painting’s story and details

In the summer of 1874 Manet often met Monet and Renoir beside the Seine at Argenteuil. The town was an easy train journey from Paris, making boating part of urban leisure in the countryside. Manet brings its participants so close that he removes almost the entire landscape. Two people, a boat, and bright water remain.

The man in white holds the tiller used to steer. A straw hat shades him, and his shirt leaves his arms bare. His figure stands out against the blue. Rodolphe Leenhoff, Manet’s brother-in-law, may have posed.

The woman sits lower and turns in another direction. Her dress fills almost the entire lower edge, concealing part of the boat. Blue, white, and gray strokes convey the striped fabric without tracing every fold. Manet combines a definite silhouette with much freer handling inside it.

No reflected bank or distant sails interrupt the water. Short horizontal strokes animate an almost continuous blue field. They suggest ripples while preserving the unity of the color. This background separates the man’s white clothes and connects the water with his companion’s blue dress.

The right edge cuts through the sail and a wooden spar. Diagonals of the gunwale and rope make the space compressed and oblique. The museum connects these choices with Japanese color prints, which Manet admired. The boat’s position denies a detached overview and places the viewer very close to its passengers.

The first Impressionist exhibition had taken place that spring. Manet did not participate, although he knew its artists and adopted a lighter palette. Separate, rapid strokes are especially visible at the bottom of the dress. Friendship and working together changed his painting even as he retained his own exhibition strategy.

He exhibited Boating at the official Salon in 1879. Mary Cassatt admired it and advised the American collectors Louisine and H. O. Havemeyer to buy it. A summer painting made near Monet passed through the established exhibition system into a new international collection.