heliogravure, paper, 47 x 37 cm
Color heliogravure, Arches France velin paper with high-grain watermark; 31 x 23 cm (plate imprint), framed in passe - partout 47 x 37 cm, numbered in pencil 102/300, signed from plate under composition "Renoir", publisher's dry stamp l. d.: letter K surrounded by the words "EDITION LIMITED CERTIFIED ARTS USA EUROPE SINCE 1998". Original certificate.
The painting depicts a group of people from the sub-Paris rowing community while having breakfast on the terrace of the "Fournaise" restaurant near the Chatou bridge on the island of the Seine, a popular meeting place for actors, artists, intellectuals of the time. In this painting, Renoir first depicted Aline Charigot, his future wife; the painter presented her as a woman wearing a hat - the first on the left, holding a dog. Jeanne Samary plugs her ears in the upper right corner of the painting - presumably she can no longer listen to the men adoring her. In the lower right corner can be seen - in a white rowing T-shirt and yellow straw hat - Gustave Caillebotte. The figure adjacent to him is the actress Angele. People in the background are the wealthy collector and publisher Charles Ephrussi (wearing a cylinder), clerk Eugene Pierre Lestinguez and artist Paul Lhote (sporting hats).
The painting refers to 16th-century Venetian feast scenes (Paolo Veronese).The artist worked on the work for several months, with all the models posing for him individually. On deeper analysis of the surface of the painting, many corrections made by Renoir during the work were discovered.
Heliogravure,which was widespread in the 19th century, was later supplanted by rotogravure, as heliogravure is an expensive and very time-consuming method. Nowadays it is sometimes used in fine art printmaking. Plates obtained by the heliogravure technique can be supplemented by other methods of intaglio printing techniques. Occasionally, this technique is also used in the reproduction of works of art, when it is necessary to create a small number of copies of very high quality.
