"There’s a pretense that we’re getting a snapshot view of a bunch of friends out for a good time on the Seine in 1881. But it doesn’t take long to figure out that each of these friends has been separately costumed and staged, then composited — Photoshopped, almost — into a single scene."

"…looking closely at a few empty glasses has let us in on something crucial about this entire painting…"

Blake Gopnik comments on Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s "Luncheon of the Boating Party." (1881) At the museum called "The Philips Collection." (Click on the painting for a monstrously large view.)

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