Charles Ephrussi -- The Hare With The Amber Eyes -- March 18, 2020

One of the best things I ever did in life was to take a summer course in "The History of Romanticism," St Olaf College, Northfield, MN, during the summer following my junior year in high school. That must have been the summer of 1968.

It did not help me a bit in my future vocation and has, as far as I know, made no tangible difference in my life.

However, as far as the "richness" of my life goes, it's hard to come up with any eight-week period that has been so rewarding.

Many years later, stationed in Germany, we visited art museums in Paris, France, on many, many occasions. I was privileged to see so much including paintings by the impressionists.

Years later, I was still enjoying their paintings, most recently at the art museum in Ft Worth, Texas.

It's hard to say how many times I've seen these paintings, but it's been many. I cannot say for sure that I've seen this painting on exhibit, but I do believe I have -- during one of the Kimball Art Museum exhibits.

The painting: Le déjeuner des canotiers, luncheon of the boating party, 1881, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, judged, by three critics, the best painting in the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition in 1882. According to wiki:

It was purchased from the artist by the dealer-patron Paul Durand-Ruel and bought in 1923, for $125,000, from his son by industrialist Duncan Phillips, who spent a decade in pursuit of the work. It is now in The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

I've seen it many, many times but never really thought about "who" might be in the picture.

Today, while reading Edmund de Waal's The Hare With The Amber Eyes, the author writes who is in that painting. Wow. One wonders if Edmund de Waal knew that before writing his book or if he came across that while doing the research. Whatever. It is quite remarkable.

Even better, if you go to the wiki link above, you can scroll down to the picture of the painting and by hovering the "pointer" over an individual, an interactive dialogue box will pop up identifying the individual with a short bio. Amazingly, the great-great-great uncle of Edmund de Waal, who first collected the netsuke about which the book is written, is in the painting. Despite being in the background, Charles Ephrussi is almost more "noticeable" then the characters in the foreground, save one or two.

I was very, very surprised to see a young Gustave Caillebotte in the painting. He would have been thirty-three years old when this painting was finished (1881), but in the painting Caillebotte certainly looks a lot younger, perhaps even in his early 20s. This is interesting. Caillebotte, a hugely important patron of the impressionists, and an incredible painter himself, was also an avid boatman. In fact, in a showing of his paintings, one painting stood out more than others: of him rowing a boat.