Edouard Manet - Boating Cushion

Boating (En bateau), painted by Édouard Manet in 1874 in oil on canvas, shows a fashionable couple relaxing aboard a sailboat on the Seine at Argenteuil. The sailor, probably Manet’s brother-in-law Rodolphe Leenhoff, sits upright in white clothes and a straw hat, while the identity of the woman reclining beside him remains uncertain. Painted during the summer Manet spent at Gennevilliers, when he frequently met Monet and Renoir at nearby Argenteuil, the work reflects their brighter Impressionist palette and freer handling of light and colour. Its tightly cropped composition, strong diagonals, flattened perspective and broad expanse of blue water also reveal Manet’s interest in Japanese prints. Exhibited at the Salon of 1879, Boating was later praised by Mary Cassatt as “the last word in painting,” and she encouraged the Havemeyers to acquire it.