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working to enrich place-based learning; public historian


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Renoir’s boating scenes

Yes, it is a justly famous painting, exhibited at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.

It is called The Luncheon of the Boating Party, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from 1881.

It’s an incredible painting that includes landscape, portraits, and still life elements…all set on an outdoor verandah with a cheerful striped awning on a summer’s day. But there is a less well-known Renoir called The Rower’s Lunch of 1875 (The Art Institute of Chicago) which is also worth a second look, also painted at Maison Fournaise. It is softer, with fewer figures and the latticework offers its own framing devices. Renoir painted other boating scenes but these are my favorites.


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What I learn by following people on WordPress. The art of a father and son, both accomplished, mostly working in Vienna in the 1800s

Rudolphe Ritter von Alt painted this view of a street in Vienna, where he died, March 12th 1905, aged 92.

Rudolph was born in Vienna on August 28th 1812.  “His father, Jakob Alt, the son of a carpenter, was a German landscape painter and lithographer who was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1789 where he received his first artistic tuition and later moved to Vienna where he enrolled at the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. “

Below is View from the Artist’s Studio in Alservorstadt toward Dornbach by Jakob Alt (1836)