From Renoir's Studio to The Phillips Collection

In 1881, shortly after Renoir completed Luncheon of the Boating Party, the painting was purchased by Paul Durand-Ruel, the Paris art dealer who played a key role in promoting Renoir's career and those of his fellow Impressionists. Although the painting passed briefly into the hands of a collector named Ernest Balensi, Durand-Ruel reacquired it by early 1882, and included it in the seventh Impressionist exhibition in March. From that time, until 1923, when the painting was purchased by Duncan Phillips, it remained in the private collection of the Durand-Ruel family.

Renoir's ambitious painting was well received by critics who reviewed the 1882 exhibition. One writer said, "It is one of the most beautiful pieces that this insurrectionist art by Independent artists has produced. For my part, I found it absolutely superb." Over the next forty years, Durand-Ruel continued to organize exhibitions that featured Renoir's increasingly famous masterpiece, both in France and in the United States.

Duncan Phillips, who opened the Phillips Memorial Gallery to the public late in 1921, saw Luncheon of the Boating Party in a New York exhibition in early 1923 and knew that the Durand-Ruel family was considering selling the painting. Duncan Phillips and his wife, the artist Marjorie Acker Phillips, traveled to Europe in the summer of 1923 and purchased the painting in Paris.

The sale of this famous French painting to an American museum attracted the attention of the press, who reported that the price, $125,000, was the largest yet paid for any work by Renoir. Duncan Phillips proudly wrote back to Washington from Paris that he had acquired for the collection "one of the greatest paintings in the world." It was to become the cornerstone of what Phillips called "a museum of modern art and its sources." Today, The Phillips Collection contains over 2,000 works of art and is internationally known among art lovers for its inviting domestic atmosphere, its fine permanent collection and special exhibitions, and, most of all, Renoir's timeless celebration of life and art.

"The big Renoir deal has gone through with Durand-Ruel and the Phillips Memorial Gallery is to be the possessor of one of the greatest paintings in the world.... The Dejeuner des Canotiers.... Its fame is tremendous and people will travel thousands of miles to our house to see it.... Such a picture creates a sensation wherever it goes." (Duncan Phillips, 1923)