Boating

Manet painted Boating in 1874, the summer after the first Impressionist exhibition. He was 42 years old and had finally started painting outdoors, something he had resisted for years. He spent the summer at his family's house in Gennevilliers, across the Seine from Argenteuil, where Monet was living. The two painters worked side by side that summer, and the paintings they produced mark the moment when Manet's style came closest to Impressionism. A man and a woman sit in a sailboat on the Seine. The man, at the left, wears a white boater's shirt and a straw hat, his body turned toward the viewer, one hand on the tiller. The woman, at the right, sits facing him, her blue dress and white trim bright against the dark water. The sail fills the upper right of the canvas, a triangle of white that cuts across the composition. The water is painted in broad strokes of blue and green, with the reflections of the boat and the sky broken into short, choppy brushmarks. The model for the man was Manet's brother-in-law, Rodolphe Leeenhoff, a Dutch musician who had married Manet's wife's sister. The woman is unidentified. The boat is a small sailing dinghy, the kind that Parisians rented on the Seine at Argenteuil on summer weekends. Boating was a fashionable leisure activity in 1874, and the painting is as much about modern Parisian life as it is about the river itself. Manet had been the leader of the avant-garde in Paris since the 1860s, when his Dejeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia caused scandals at the Salon. But he had never joined the Impressionist group, and he refused to exhibit with them. He thought the Salon was the proper venue for a serious painter, even though the jury had rejected his work repeatedly. By 1874, he was beginning to adopt the Impressionist palette and brushwork, but he kept his figures solid and his compositions structured, where Monet and Renoir were dissolving forms into light. Oil on canvas, 97 by 130 centimeters. Manet painted the water in loose, direct strokes of blue and green, building the reflections in short, horizontal marks. The figures are painted more carefully, with the faces and hands modeled in warm flesh tones. The white sail is painted in thick, opaque strokes of lead white, which gives it a dense, physical presence against the blue water. The surface has a combination of finish and freedom that is characteristic of Manet's work in the 1870s. The horizontal format and blue-green palette make this print work well in a living room, dining room, or any room with natural light. The blues and whites pair with white walls, natural wood, and blue-and-white ceramics. The 18x24 size is the best choice, as the composition needs width to read. The painting has a fresh, summery quality that suits rooms with a relaxed mood. The painting entered the Met's collection in 1889, gifted by Erwin Davis. It was one of the first Manet paintings to enter an American collection. This is a public domain artwork (CC0), scanned from the original at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.