Luncheon of the Boating Party: Alphonse

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1 - Alphonse
5	'Have you nothing better to do?', calls my father, not discreetly, as would befit my station (son of the proprietor, after all) but in a blacksmith's bellow, spittle flecking his chin: 'These boats need repairing.' Instead
10	I lean on the balustrade, observer and observed, posing for a painting. (When will he understand it is not seemly to move, once positioned?) By an artisan too, no mistake about it: a true painter who finds the term artist effete.
15	How long it could take, God knows. Some cocotte wrote asking to be in it. When she found Angèle already here, the fur flew. 'Snotty bitch!' 'Just because you sat for Degas!' From our upper terrace come their voices, across four decades.
20	And all illusion: the fourteen of us never together at the one time, far less spaciously composed. That aside, why make me so severe; and Caillebotte, seated opposite, conspicuously fresh-faced? Not that I'm other
25	than proud to be there: look how many (a Baron included) it took to counterbalance me. Most astounding, the light: no criss-cross of shade under the striped awning, but a steady suffusion. The way he depicts it forces me to re-remember.
30	'That must be the boatman,' I suddenly overhear, 'waiting till luncheon's over, to ply his trade.' 'Or Charon, envisaging the placing of coins, in due time.' Not dreaming I'd catch the reference; or realising how, uppermost in my mind
35	and complementing those succulent flesh-tones, was Renoir's skin, even then tightening on his bones like canvas stretched over the frame of a painting; as in one of those pleasure-boats, long-since gone, he would sit, to be rowed across the dappled Seine.

Literary Comments

Alphonse seems to take the good things in life, not avoiding pleasure for duty. He also seems to see that life is fleeting and will not last forever. Despite his father's calling, he remains stationary, "observer and observed" (6). He notices while looking at the completed painting that all fourteen people posing had never been together at the same time, thus breaking the 'illusion' Renoir creates in the painting where everyone appears to have come together to share each other's company. Renoir painted some of the people separately rather than as group and with his skill made them all into a complete whole.

Alphonse overhears some people talking about him as a boatman "waiting till luncheon's over to ply his trade. Or Charon, envisaging the placing of coins, in due time" (27-28). He understands what they are talking about, that they see him as Charon, the mythological eternal boatman who carries the dead across the rivers Styx and Acheron, receiving the coin from the mouth of the corpse as payment for his task. Perhaps Alphonse is seen as a level beneath the others socially causing them to assume he will not understand what they say, but he does, thus proving he is at the very least educated in some Greek mythology.

What the others do not know is that Alphonse's thoughts are leaning towards death, or at least the demise thereto. He looks at the 'effete' artist, worn out, paintbrush in hand, as an example of how short life is. Renoir was 40 years old when he painted this painting and perhaps the rheumatism that later confined him to a wheelchair was already taking hold on his body. Alphonse notices the sickly and dilapidated condition of Renoir's rheumatism, causing his skin to tighten "on his bones like canvas stretched over the frame of a painting" (33). He sees the passing of time in a negative light, at least in regards to Renoir, who years after the painting is finished is declining in health and will sadly need to be "rowed across the dappled Seine" by his own eternal boatman (35).

April La Blanc 2001